January Update

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The State of Gibberish

Winter Hiatus enters it’s second month. It’s also the 2 year anniversary of starting Gibberish as a Fiction newsletter.

Last year I made a lot of promises upon which I failed to deliver. I won’t recount them—if you were around last year you remember. And if you’ve forgotten then you’ve done me a mercy.

This year, I’m understating my promises. Q1 2025 is going to be rocky IRL but I think that by Q2 things might settle down, such as they can. So I’m aiming for consistency more than growth, though I am sure growth will come organically.

I am going to change a lot of things about how this year looks. I’ve been pretty insular about Gibberish, by personal necessity. I write, I ponder, and I hope you like it¹. But I’ve always had a passion for helping others write, lifting up unconsidered names. That’s part of what gave the Gibberish Writing Competition life. But I’d like to invest in this passion without the context of a competition.

So a lot will change, but again my goals for the year only extend so far as consistency.

Let’s Talk About The Plan

Weekly writing exercises have long been a staple feature of Gibberish. I’ve told people they help me “keep the pilot light on” of creativity. But at the same time, I am not being as thoughtful with them as I could be, and I want to build up the habit of writing longer fiction. So the first change is this: Weekly Writing Exercises are being retired. But don’t fret, something will replace them.

If friendship is ended with Weekly Writing Exercises, Monthly Writing Exercises are new best friend! I plan to write one 500-1500 word story with a deliberate exercise plan every month. They will leverage new prompts, I will go into them with a stated plan for what I am going to practice. The plan will include an aspect of craftsmanship, an aspect of editing, something conceptual in the story, and something about writing time. These will be what I discuss in the Paid Craft-Chats going forward—I’ll talk about my plan and my execution.

I mentioned prompts. Do you remember last year when I did Flash Fiction Friday? I liked those and I’ve heard from some that other people liked them too. Unfortunately, the way I was doing it didn’t work for me, and when my life got stressful something had to drop. This year, I am planning to lean back into this. I’ve created a section on my homepage, my prompts will be posts, I will invite all of you to share what you write from the prompts in the Flash Fiction Friday Chats! I’m taking inspiration from the likes of

Macabre Monday

and

Andrew Smith

’s Sci Friday to help make a space for everyone to try their hand at prompt based writing and celebrating the craft as much as the “content”. The new-and-improved Flash Fiction Friday will take the place of my weekly writing exercises, but move to Friday instead of Tuesday. (the monthly exercises will still be on Tuesdays).

I really, REALLY struggle with big, background writing projects. I’ve got good excuses, maybe. I announced on Notes sometime in December that a limited serial, The Trials of the Hearken, would be coming when the Hiatus ends. That story is huge, and it’s taken me months to work on it. So this is part of the reason for the change! I’ve optimized for short fiction. I want to get better at longer fiction. So Long Fiction will continue to be a surprise for both you AND me. It’ll come when it comes.

Finally, something a few of you may be watching hopefully for, let’s talk about The Gibberish Writing Competition 2025. I am thinking very hard about what this does and how this looks and why this exists. A big reason it exists is because I wanted to find and highlight up-and-coming writers. For GWC24, several of the competitors started off with less than 200 subscribers (per the rules) and now have more subscribers than I do. YET ALSO, several people who applied for GWC24 and were not accepted (through no fault of their own) also have grown dramatically. Which tells me GWC was not the differentiator—the authors were. They found their audience. Maybe GWC helped nudge them at the beginning but anyway I’m not going to take credit for their hard work, even during the competition. They earned every pair of eyes reading them. The worst thing about GWC frankly is the Judging and Competition. Judging is hard, and if judging is BAD then it ceases to be competitive. If it’s going to be called a Competition, that needs to mean something.

So with all that being said—I think the most effective part of GWC was the bootcamp part of it. So what if I did that? What if the C in GWC stood for “Class” or “Camp” instead of “Competition”? I think that would help me keep all the things that are good about it and remove all the things that are bad. Anyway, the future, the timing, and the structure of GWC25 are all both “up in the air” and “on the table”. We’ll see how the cards fall when the cookie crumbles.

OH one last thing. Between beginning to draft this post and actually publishing it, Substack launched it’s LIVE VIDEO FEATURE. I, personally, am very excited about it. I have a handful of plans for it, mostly it seems to me like a good excuse to talk to you and get to know you and spend some time thinking about what matters to you. I do not have a gift for interviewing people, so I can’t promise that. But as with most things Substack, I can at least be relied upon to experiment² with it until I find something that works or until I decide it’s not working for me. Expect more from this in 2025.

I am really excited for 2025 and I think all of these changes are going to be for the good. Thank you for joining me for it!

If you like how 2025 sounds, I am extending the 20% off promo thru the end of my hiatus, 2/1/25! If you’d like to get in on the ground floor, there is no better time than now!

The Paywallening

The inexorable icewall of paid content marches forward through time! Everything from March 2023 and earlier has gone behind a paywall as of publication of this post. Check out the previous update to see the stories that have gone behind the wall!

On February 1st, everything from April 2023 and earlier will go behind a paywall. The next stories to go under are these:

• Writing Exercises

  • Crunch: The Immortal

  • Prompt: The Dead on Arrival

• Flash Fiction

  • Before the Rain

• Serials

  • No serials this month!

• Essays

  • Lunar Awards Episode 2

  • Another one (note to self)

This is your last chance to read these stories for free! Check them out now!

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If a paid subscription is not something you can manage right now—never fear! Using the Referral program, you can earn a paid subscription by referring someone else to subscribe using your custom link!

By sharing this link with a friend or family, when they subscribe you will get credit for referring the subscription, and starting at 2 new subscribers, you will earn 6 months or more of paid access!³

Photo by Mike Tinnion on Unsplash

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Thank you for reading!

This turned into a bit of a newsy newsletter, thank you all for reading, happy new year, and have a wonderful and blessed 2025!

Happy writing!

- Scoot

1. My numbers reflect this behavior. You get out what you put in—this was understood before but now proven by experience. I have no regrets, but this year is the year I invest more deeply!

2. Already dun up and did it: Check out my first live stream here! I did a second as well, a write-with-me stream, but did not post the footage of me sitting quietly for an hour.

3. If you are interested in this, I just juiced the referral perks to make them a little more worth-while. Referring 2 subscribers gets you a 6 months comp, and that’s the minimum tier!