When did writing take over from painting? How does painting inform writing?
With so many things in production, I don’t always honor my own deadlines. I don’t have to tell you, I’m not a machine, as the saying goes—although now there is literally a machine to refer to. I don’t use any of these new tech products, but I certainly do act like one sometimes, and especially on Substack.
2024
As I was telling a fellow Substacker, who asked what all I got up to this year, I finished a manuscript and got another to 56k. I finished a book of 1 very short stories (50 words), started a second Substack newsletter for humor writing (Helium Voices), made scads of illustrations, wrote about 20 short stories, with a few submitted and accepted, and got a story into a print anthology that comes out in two weeks. Also, I launched a novel (The Acton) here, in installments. We’re at chapter thirteen.
Substack
With an open rate of 26.I-don’t-give-a-fuck%, what I post here might only be interesting to me and about seven other people, give or take. Nevertheless, I thank these five-seven people with all my heart, and will continue to produce for them with the same sense of responsibility as if they were five-seven million. That’s about as swaggery as I get, but I will honor my commitments, and that’s no swagger.
Sneak Peek
Here is the cover of my next thing to release into the wild, and one of my favorite illustrations from the series of twelve.
A sample:
Wednesday August 16, 2023 #horse 1 Rilke was my horse. A gelding with a lustrous, russet coat, he was as good-natured as one of the dogs. That's why he was the only male accorded the privilege of ranging freely on the grounds. Rilke would sneak up behind me sometimes, to plunk his big head on my shoulder. 2 In the blowing halepense lived a music master who played instruments of his own design. Modulating from one to another tone and signature, he was a conjurer working grand changes on time. His men, chosen without haste, like silver horses, bore him aloft in song.
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Monday August 28, 2023 #draw You're drawing circles on parchment in the sun. A tear falls, a dark moon on the page. And you draw water from the quiet river to wash out your brush. You will return because all your life is a circle. The birds fly backwards and your stomach hurts, but you don't care.
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I’m not sure yet where I will share this collection of very short stories and prose poems, but it’ll be in PDF form.
Regular posts for The Acton, Remote Control and Helium Voices will continue on 6 January.
Happy New Year!
This business of writing one page a day is very cool, you should all try it.
Ooh I really like that poem at the end! Well done for kicking all these goals in 2024. Onwards!
What a productively productive person you are, you so are Camila.
Thank you for everything I've managed to read since picking up on your postings during this year, this passing year on which the bell - at midnight, wherever we each happen to be - is soon to toll.
This latest, lovely post gives me confidence that in the year of 2025, about to be ushered in, you'll be writing away and the likes of I will be reading away borne and buoyed up by the literal fruits of your fertile literary imagination.
For today "adieu", looking forward - "a bientot" - to what arrives in my inbox from the 6th January onward.
Thanks again for the gift of your writings.
Rob