Subscriber Writing Roundup

Edition I

Aug 07, 2023

Greetings, my fellow bookworms!

Today is the first Monday of August, which means it’s time for our first ever Subscriber Writing Roundup!

What follows are 34 links to great pieces of writing from BTMU subscribers. From personal memoir to essays on books, from travel writing to seafood recipes, we have a wide range of brilliant writing on show. Something for everyone.

Dive in!

Practice Space

No. 14 - The Lords of Summer

As a boy, I had a friend. By virtue of being my only friend, he was also my best friend. We shared a first name, and almost every afternoon, although we’d spent all day at school together, we grabbed our phones and dialed each other’s landline number. Often we’d call at the same tim…

2 years ago · 34 likes · 24 comments · Andrei Atanasov

Andrei Atanasov

writes an essay-length memoir about the loss of his childhood friend one summer day, inspired by the work of Sherman Alexie and Hayao Miyazaki.

Not That You Asked

Croatia Diaries: Somebody Feed Tom

If you look up the entry for octopus on Wikipedia, as I sometimes do on a particularly slow afternoon, you’ll find that it tells you that octopuses are “among the most intelligent and behaviourally diverse of all invertebrates.” They also have “a complex nervous system” and “excellent sight.” What Wikipedia will not tell you, but that I am here to stres…

2 years ago · 13 likes · 6 comments · Tom Fish

Tom Fish

writes a diary entry about discovering he loves octopus, which was somehow one of the cheapest things he ate in the old town of Dubrovnik.

Talking to Myself

my raw material

Last Sunday, I couldn’t go to sleep. Isabel Cowles Murphy published a piece for her new series “Raw Material,” where she asked the big questions (and called me her friend…I’m humbled). My brain was on fire - in the best way. My synapses were moving at warp speed. I started writing sentences in my head…

2 years ago · 19 likes · 13 comments · Caroline A

Caroline A

writes an essay inspired by her friend and fellow Substacker Isabel Cowles Murphy and is a reflection on growing up as the "well" child.

Something's Up

The Relaxed Husband Energy Experiment

They say opposites attract, and I have found this to be true in my marriage in many ways. I am a morning person, while my husband is a night owl. He is seemingly scared of nothing, and I, everything. I am a planner, and he likes to live on the edge (or on a combination of the edge, and the outputs of my planning capabilities). Take all of these opposing…

2 years ago · 12 likes · 6 comments · Avery B

Avery B

spent 5 days trying to mimic her husband's more relaxed, less Type-A approach to life and wrote about her experiences and learnings, and got a lot of feedback that both men and women really related to this!

Kindling

Books Are Life Rafts

If you’re new here, welcome. This is Binge, the section of my newsletter where I write about stories I’m reading and how I feel about them. I give you my recommendations, and I’d love it if you would give me yours.Thanks for reading Kindling! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work…

2 years ago · 28 likes · 19 comments · Shaina Read

Shaina Read

‘s essay on the books that pulled her through some of the most difficult times of her life. Very on theme for BTMU!

The Walkist

Explosions, Chafing, and Only One Taste: Sensory Recall Game

I’ve always enjoyed bringing all my senses to the party. There was a time when I lived just two miles from my office. I would walk to work from time to time. I liked to make the walk before the sun was up, before the sound of cars dominated. I would create a sensory cross-section of the path in my mind…

2 years ago · 10 likes · 16 comments · Anaiah Matthew

Anaiah Matthew

‘s piece is an exploration of memory through sensory recall framed as a game to be played with his readers.

June's Writing

Dealing with the dead. Part 1.

This post is the first of two and you might want to read them in succession. Both of Part 1 and Part 2 talk about death and dying and touch on my experiences of both. Please engage in self-care as you read these articles. October 1973 ‘Nurse Walters, will you help me lay out Frances, please…

2 years ago · 14 likes · 20 comments · June Girvin

June Girvin

writes a short memoir vignette from her time as a Nursing student more than 45 years ago. It's a powerful reflection of a single experience of caring once life has gone.

Ten Thousand Journeys

Ten thousand journeys

Starting this Substack was hard enough that I didn’t give too much thought to what I would write about. I had a vague idea of writing essays on different topics of interest and seeing if I could serialize my novel once I finished it. But, three months in, someone pointed out a theme to all my posts. Without being aware of it, every post I have written i…

2 years ago · 15 likes · 16 comments · Priya Iyer

Priya Iyer

writes an essay on the myriad life journeys we go on, and the all-important moment of awareness that jumpstarts everything.

Mentatrix

Do It, So You Can Feel It

For several years, I had a hard time saying goodbye to my daughter after spending even just a weekend together. I wrote somewhere else that it gave me a Dementor episode, as if all the joy of the world was gone. It happened once that we spent a week’s vacation in Italy. On the last day, I dropped her at the railway st…

2 years ago · 7 likes · 4 comments · Zoe Carada

Zoe Carada

writes a cross-genre piece illustrating how gaining distance in physical space could help us gain distance in our minds when we need closure.

Eclecticism: Reflections on literature and life

My life in cafés

Ever since I was about 12 years old, I’ve loved cafés. My parents had a shop in a market, and I’d help them out. In my breaks, or when they didn’t need me for a while, I’d repair to the café, where I’d sit quaffing a milky coffee, eating hot buttered toast, and reading a Superman or Batman comic. Bliss…

3 years ago · 19 likes · 21 comments · Terry Freedman

Terry Freedman

loves reading or writing in cafes, and so wanted to convey something of the atmosphere in three cafes he has known.

Subconscious Fat

There Are No Geniuses

Mr. Skeptical starts talking before I can begin. “I saw your title for today’s newsletter, and I think now you’ve really done it. You have exposed yourself as the egotistical, selfish idiot that you are. This title alone gives you away. I want our readers out there to know that I, Mr. Skeptical had nothing to do with this…

2 years ago · 1 like · 2 comments · Hermann J. Diehl

Thinking there are no geniuses has helped

Hermann J. Diehl

’s writing, and here he explains why one of the best-selling literary classic novels of all time wasn’t the work of a writing genius.

gratitude mojo and substack explorers

Substack: rejection letters be gone!

I was forty years old when I stopped accepting rejection letters. Desktop publishing had just become part of the technology world when the thought occurred to me that if I published my own newsletter, I could write about whatever I wanted and avoid rejection letters altogether…

2 years ago · 6 likes · 4 comments · Joyce Wycoff

Joyce Wycoff

writes of this piece: “Thirty years ago, creating my own newsletter changed my life dramatically; today, Substack makes it easy to avoid rejection letters and build our own writing businesses.”

Get Real, Man

What will you die for?

The year is 399 BC. The city, Athens. On this day, the society that invented philosophia – the love of wisdom – will kill its wisest man. Socrates’ relentless pursuit of truth was famous. The Oracle of Delphi couldn’t have been clearer: “No man is wiser than Socrates.” But for all his wisdom, he upset the wrong men. Whether…

3 years ago · 55 likes · 37 comments · Latham Turner

Latham Turner

writes an essay about trying to find what matters to him that he could build a personal philosophy around.

Garrett Francis

How I Fell in Love with Story—an essay

2 years ago · 7 likes · 5 comments · Garrett Francis

Garrett Francis

reflects upon the two rugged men who had no idea they were teaching him key lessons on the power of story.

The Declining Academic

The Kids Are Alright (Part II)

Last night, our family journeyed to Milwaukee to see Paramore, a band that our daughters love. For some backstory, when my older daughter was a toddler, she somehow stumbled upon their song “The Only Exception,” and I quickly learned it on guitar (it’s easy, even for me) and she would sing. When Paramore playe…

2 years ago · 1 like · 1 comment · The Declining Academic

The Declining Academic

‘s account of his first official experience as "the parent at the concert" and what he learned about the warmth and growth of a younger generation.

Create Me Free

Leonora Carrington Art and Mental Health: Artist's Mind Blog Tour Stop with GIVEAWAY!

Thank you for joining me on the virtual book tour for The Artist’s Mind: The Creative Lives and Mental Health of Famous Artists. The tour kicked off with a guest post that I wrote for Jodie Benvenist…

2 years ago · 9 likes · 4 comments · Kathryn Vercillo

Kathryn Vercillo

‘s book, The Artist’s Mind, is on a Substack virtual tour this month and she created this post as part of that: some unpublished content on Leonora Carrington PLUS SIGNED BOOK GIVEAWAY!

Stomp Roams

Stomp huffs shine and tries to love himself.

In the spring of 2023, I experienced a period of grief, and I wrote a few hundred words at a time for ten weeks. I channeled this sadness into a character that is funny, weird, awkward, absurd, and hopeful. I remember that despite the prominent moments of darkness, all of those traits are also me…

2 years ago · 5 likes · Jonathan Delp

Jonathan Delp

‘s story of how a wounded turnip-farming he-squatch must learn to live again when he's tasked with babysitting 11 feral Maine orphan children. How could you not be intrigued by that?!!

Outsourced Optimism

AweGust: Rediscover a Summer of Wonder

2023 Update: It’s been one year since this essay was first published and, what started as a creative spark and a clever pun (if I may say so myself) has become… Camp AweGust: A (free), 4 week, self-guided, virtual summer camp for nostalgic grown ups and stuck creatives who want to feel like a kid again. Starts August 8th, but you can join anytime. More …

3 years ago · 7 likes · 14 comments · Tami Carey

Tami Carey

’s piece describes how a canceled vacation and a general sense of August Angst becomes a nostalgic search to reclaim the magic and freedom of childhood summers and find the extraordinary joys that live in our own backyard.

Let Me Challenge Your Thinking

Exceptional Delusions: Revolutionary Road, Marriage, and America

Most people know Revolutionary Road as a wonderfully sad 2008 movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. But RR was a Richard Yates 1962 book before that, one that was wildly popular with critics and other literary authors, but not with the wider public. It’s a beautifully written book with the theme of “hopeless emptiness,” precisely how the ma…

2 years ago · 11 likes · 8 comments · david roberts

Let Me Challenge Your Thinking

‘s David Roberts looks at Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates through the lens of how an exaggerated sense of being exceptional can be so destructive to a marriage or to any relationship, including among the citizens of a country.

Inside Reader

Demon's Voice and Empathy

Inside Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead (and David Copperfield…

2 years ago · 3 likes · Martha Nichols

Martha Nichols

looks at how Barbara Kingsolver's fabulous Demon Copperhead riffs on David Copperfield by Dickens — and why both have inspired by fascination with the first-person autobiographical voice.

Kindness Boomerang Newsletter

Love made visible

“Cooking is love made visible.” – Anonymous Back in 2010, my mother and I put together a collection of favorite recipes that various family members had selected. My mother carefully hand-wrote the recipes, making sure that all of the steps were listed so that others would have the ability to also make these treasured foods…

2 years ago · 2 comments · Sheila Dembowski

Sheila Dembowski

‘s essay is dedicated to her mother who taught her that no one is born a cook - they are made, with love and patience...

Personal Canon Formation

Tolkien and Vaughan Williams Meet on a Train

Tolkien and Vaughan Williams Meet on a Train For years I’ve had this idea for a one-act play: the great English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams meets medievalist, philologist, and (by the way) best-selling writer J.R.R. Tolkien on a train. That’s pretty much all I’ve got…

2 years ago · 2 likes · John Halbrooks

John Halbrooks

‘ piece explains why he’s always thought about writing (but has never actually written) a one-act play about J.R.R. Tolkien and the great English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams meeting on a train. (I for one would definitely read that play!)

Politics is Personal

My little sister, the mass murderer

Let me make something very clear: my little sister is a very nice person. Honestly. She loves children; she spent her whole life working in kindergartens. She has two diplomas, a distinguished career with recognitions, awards and trade journal articles. She retired from her accomplished career just a few months ago, but to me, she is still my little sis…

2 years ago · 10 likes · 7 comments · Zork (the) Hun

Zork (the) Hun

‘s piece reflects on the fact that guilt and responsibility are a complicated business and few are ready to consider its intricacies.

A Brand New Day • Sustainable Habits

Unshackling The Mind

I grew up being taught a very strong set of religious beliefs. Beliefs that were portrayed as truths. These beliefs completely determined my outlook on the world around me. Restrictions masked as protection from evil, caused me to get distanced from the world outside of those who shared my beliefs…

2 years ago · 1 like · Boaz

Boaz of

A Brand New Day • Sustainable Habits

writes of a personal journey from rigid beliefs to open-mindedness (2 min read).

Textual Variations

Martin can’t avoid the Others anymore in 'Winds of Winter'

There have been numerous attempts to explain why author George R.R. Martin still hasn’t finished The Winds of Winter, the sixth novel in his epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire (ASOIAF), despite having been at work on it for over a decade. Many think that Martin tends to occupy himself with a lot more projects nowadays than he used to due to his …

3 years ago · 9 likes · Mikhail Skoptsov

Mikhail Skoptsov

claims that George R.R. Martin's latest novel 'The Winds of Winter' has been delayed, as the author's approach to writing fantasy in general and magic in particular is clashing with the demands of his story, which requires demystifying the supernatural beings known as 'The Others.'

Building Hope

Three lights

A special mid-week post to share a few brief moments of wonder. Enjoy…

2 years ago · 14 likes · 29 comments · Julie Gabrielli

Julie Gabrielli

says: “Light is everywhere, usually overlooked, but all bets are off when we notice.”

The GSD Way

Dream Killers, Status Quo, The Resistance and The Lizard Brain

What stops progress? What hinders those that GSD? Dream Killers and Lovers of Status Quo. These are the outward and external sources. They could be anybody, those you work with, family, friends, and online followers or commenters. They speak the language of doubt, disapproval, despair, and discord…

2 years ago · 3 likes · Justin McCullough

Justin McCullough

says: “Getting stuff done as a leader requires courage to see the future, do hard things, and overcome the inner and outer critics. This gives names and traits to the things that seek to hold you back - so you can lean in and do meaningful work and get stuff done!”

Constant Commoner

When There's a Monster in Your Midst it Can't be Anything Else

This is a fairy tale. But that’s not to say it couldn’t happen: Once upon a time there were two villages within yelling distance of each other. There was a time they all got along—or most of them, anyway—but now, what with cattle rustling and wife stealing and fence moving and all, they almost never saw eye to eye. …

2 years ago · 20 likes · 7 comments · Ramona Grigg

Ramona Grigg

writes a fairy tale of sorts, smacking of some modern-day silliness.

Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops by

Marty Malin

Marty writes a short story about a dying old man whose family hopes to spend a final birthday with him.

A Pisgah Site

A Tribute to Brooks Kerr

My most remarkable remembrance of Brooks Kerr was as I was walking alone to summer camp on Martha’s Vineyard, camp Aquinnah on West Chop in Vineyard Haven. I was on Tashmoo Avenue approaching Main Street. Then he rode down the hill in front of me on Main, passing from right to left by himself on a tandem bicycle, looking straight ahead. My e…

3 years ago · 3 likes · 1 comment · Ehud Neor

Ehud Neor

‘s tribute to Brooks Kerr, a fine person and talented musician, and the last one chosen for games at summer camp.

Marple’s Substack

First chapter - thoughts?!

Not much could be said to Doggett anymore, ever since he had stepped down from the Guildford Constabulary. He was, he supposed, a finished man, yesterday’s hero, someone who had had his moment. Luckier then most he was prepared to admit but still somehow with the lurching sense of disappointment in his stomach that he tried to ignore day on day. Retirem…

2 years ago · 6 likes · 8 comments · Marple

Marple

‘s Chapter 1 of her upcoming 20 chapter novel - pub date 28/09/23.

NYUGrad Stocks and Finance

Op-Ed "Incline Village, Lake Tahoe CEOs go bust!"

Couldn’t happen to a nicer group of people if it does. They did take the entrepreneurial risk and had the courage to pitch for investment. I will give them that! Even if it was a stupid pizza robot platform idea Zume that raised $400M from Softbank ventures and went bust…

2 years ago · 2 likes · NYUGrad

NYUGrad

discusses the not reported on subject of pending "down rounds" in tech valuations via Private Equity firms for a slew of cash burning companies almost out of money.

How to Eat in Peru

Seafood Rice Across Two Continents

In this post, I take a slight detour from Peruvian cuisine and dive into paella, a classic Spanish dish that we recently tried for what felt like the first time. At the end of the post, I’ll loop back and make the connection to Peruvian food…

2 years ago · 5 likes · 2 comments · Sutee Dee

Sutee Dee

celebrates two great seafood rice dishes from two continents-Paella in Valencia and Arroz con Mariscos in Lima.