What's going on?

Something else new from Compendia! Subplots is going to be my weekly snapshot of where I am in life, what I’ve been up to, what’s been preoccupying me etc. The life of a writer is pretty varied, and though much of my time is spent alone at the desk chatting to imaginary people, not all of it by any means. So here’s (some of) the rest…

Monday July 1st 2024

The moon over the water, Brighton UK. I snapped this on the way back from a queer book club I’ve joined. We’re reading Matthew Todd’s ‘Straight Jacket’.

Where am I in life? Well that’s too big a question, so let’s move on to what I’ve been up to and what’s preoccupying my time.

Well, right now, I’m preoccupied with this Substack, and Subplots in particular. I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of weeks, and as is so often the case when I sit down to actually write it the questions pop up and the doubts and uncertainties start to take over. Will anyone be interested in this? Will I end up oversharing? Is this really just another way of procrastinating? How much do I make free for everyone to read, and how much to give only to my reader-supporters? Will people comment, and turn this into a dialogue, (PLEASE comment!) or will it feel like I’m just writing into the void?

Then there are the questions about format, too. I wrote a post a few months ago (‘Five Days at the Coalface’), which was aiming for a similar thing. That seemed to resonate, but in that post I divided my week into themes, rather than going day by day. Should I do that here? Or should I document each day, more like a diary or journal? If so, should I write every day? There are days when nothing happens, of course. Or nothing that’s in any way interesting to other people, anyway. Nothing juicy. So which is best?

Five Days at the Coalface

There's the question of how personal I should get as well. This is something I've grappled with, to a greater or lesser extent, ever since I've been a published writer. On the one hand I like to be open and honest, to share things and let my readers see who I really am, stripped of pretence or artifice. On the other, I do believe that for a healthy and creative life it's important to protect the creative spirit. Oversharing, or certainly oversharing too soon, can be detrimental to a project. This is something I saw with The Experiment, which I think suffered from my openness (or perhaps I'm kidding myself, maybe it suffered because my heart was never really in it, or not in it enough, anyway).

Or maybe this is all bullshit (Yet another question — to swear, or not to swear?) — possibly I'm just overthinking everything. It's not like any decisions I make today are binding, after all. No one’s going to be coming after me, yelling ‘You said you were going to be personal and yet you’ve told us nothing about your sex life at all!’ Or, at least I hope they're not, anyway. And the whole point of this Substack — on some level, and for me, anyway — is that it's supposed to be creative, and fun.  

So, let's suck it and see, shall we? For now, I'm going to be writing dated entries, though not every day. The dates will correspond to the time of writing, not the events I'm describing. I'm going to post once a week, and my plan is for this to be on a Tuesday. I'm going to be honest with you all, and when I can't be, or rather when I haven't been, I'm going to call out my own bullshit. I'm going to be fairly brief, most of the time. I reserve the right to write a longer post if something’s been particularly interesting or noteworthy, and those posts may or may not form part of Subplots.

And is it all going to be free? Much of it, yes. But some of it’s going to be reserved for my reader-supporters. And I guess, almost by default, that's going to be the juiciest stuff. That's if there is any juice. I'm certainly hoping for juice. I mean, who wants to live a juice-free life? Not me. More juice, please.

Oh, yes. There will be photographs. This is one.

Patti Smith, Brighton Dome, UK. July 25th. An astonishing concert. The word ‘icon’ is overused, but Smith is one. She had the whole audience in the palm of her hand, and the love in the room, both from the stage and directed towards it, was electrifying. People have the power indeed.

(All the photos will be by me, unless otherwise stated).

So there we are. My first entry. I’ll schedule this post now, for Tuesday morning. I did say Tuesday, didn’t I? Yes. I did.