Thanks for this. I needed it. Am still at the embryonic stage on Substack but still believing it. And incidentally, I agree with you fully on the variously controversial questions. Please keep it up 🙏
I admire your perseverance and resilience and it seems that your early diligence in studying really spills over and benefits your writing. I have seen most of your posts on discrimination in the writing world unless there are some I am not able to see. Thanks so much for all the encouragement you offer always and particularly in this post. Our journeys are all different but the difficulties sometimes somewhat similar. A victory for one is a possible victory for many. Onward.
As a young Gen Xer, I made the mistake of an MFA that so many writers my age made. It taught me absolutely nothing about the publishing world of today. As frustrating as I find the "influencer" side of finding an audience today, the old literary journal paradigm always felt like an elitist scam as well. I'm just encouraged to find that people are reading, no matter the format, and anything we can do to revitalize the fire of American letters I'm in full support of. Thank you for sharing your experience navigating these waters.
Weird, I was subscribed and even liked and commented on this post…. Only to see you pop up again as a recommended subscribe; and I WASN’T subscribed anymore. (WTH?)
So, I have subscribed again. I hope you haven’t lost any other subscribers lately. I’ve been hearing some accounts losing subscribers like that.
I love reading these kinds of success stories! I went from nobody to a marginally-successful Substacker (so still kind of nobody... but a much more purposeful and fulfilled and connected nobody, thanks to this app).
I'm writing an essay right now ('Substack Unto Death') about how this platform has structured my writing, and fired my enthusiasm by giving me readers and interesting models (like Liza) and put me in contact with brilliant creators. Writing on this platform has sustained me, through incarceration, unemployment, addiction... and now sobriety. Thanks, Substack!
👏👏👏 Such an inspiring article, Liza! It tells an amazing story of how a young woman never gave up in the face of frustration, rejection, disappointment, ridicule, and despair and grew her Substack page into a massive platform with 20,000+ subscribers! In 2015, you started out as a blogger with a page called Pens and Poison. But it didn’t work out as not many people read your stuff, your were forced to write about trendy and silly topics and your immature and ignorant peers made fun of your old fashioned writing style. On a side note, people need to stop saying college is an adult environment. It’s not, college kids are no more mature than high schoolers are. College is essentially just an extension of high school just more expensive.
But returning to the topic at hand, you got tired of all this nonsense and gave up on the blog. Your poetry also kept getting negative reviews and your first novel Man a Museum got rejected. So you gave up on writing as you had bills and students loans to pay. You decided the time for dream chasing was over. It was time to be practical and take a new direction that you could actually earn a living off of. That’s why you decided to start Invictus Prep. Your business thrived and you genuinely loved doing it. But you came to feel burned out and still loved writing. You had a chance conversation with another writer on a rooftop and he introduced you to the idea of writing a newsletter. So you revived Pens and Poison and sent your writing out to see if anyone might be interested in publishing it.
Two smaller publications picked up your pieces back to back and it was a huge win for you that gave you a major confidence boost. Also, your magnum opus on Substack Leave Literature Alone, blew up and has reached previously unimaginable heights today with thousands of likes and shares and hundreds of comments. The stuff you posted after that didn’t do as well but it didn’t discourage you, and diligence matched with dreams in time turned Pens & Poison into a substantial publication and the Boston Globe of all people reached out to you to bring you on as a freelance writer.
You continue to work to get one of your two novels published and there is still a ways to go. But you’ve come quite far indeed and Pens and Poison has risen to heights you never could’ve of dreamed of all those years ago in college when you were just a blogger with a dream and passion. You absolutely killed it with this article, Liza and reminded us all why we should never give up on the things that matter most to us. We can succeed if we believe in ourselves and keep working it at it. Don’t listen to the naysayers and the snarky comments from the peanut gallery they don’t matter or determine your worth as a person or professionally in a given field. Just propel yourself forward, keep chugging along and never, ever think that you don’t have what it takes! Give yourself a chance and believe me someone will give you a chance and other people will appreciate your work!
In closing, I wanted to provide everyone with a reading list for beginners that I thought up to help them to develop a love of literature and to combat the woke garbage forced into English classes these days:
• Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
• The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• The Great Gatsby: The Only Authorized Edition by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Collected Poems of John Keats by John Keats
• The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
• The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Dracula by Bram Stroker
• The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
• Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life by Barbara J. Fields and Karen E. Fields
• Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism by Ibn Warraq
Sounds like you were a "failed writer" not because you are not a good writer but because it is really hard to get the visibility needed to get the attention necessary to launch a career or a viable platform that will allow you to make money off of it. Without that one essay that gave you visibility, you would likely be in the same place you were in 2023. And that is the real problem, breaking through the noise to get something one writes enough attention to kind of put you on the map. Obviously one has to be able to follow it up with other quality stuff to keep attention, but man that first barrier is a killer.
How about short stories? I do absurdist short fiction. It can be a little bleak, but tinged and dipped in humanity to make it ache just a bit. It about communicating the deepest struggles of people and how that carves us into beautiful sculptures of humanity. If you have a moment here is the story of Eddy Lockless. An unlucky man that the universe beat into its comfy couch. When it stopped his problems began.
If you find the characters interesting or the ideas sticky please interact, question, restack and subscribe for the follow up.
Thanks for this. I needed it. Am still at the embryonic stage on Substack but still believing it. And incidentally, I agree with you fully on the variously controversial questions. Please keep it up 🙏
Thank you. This was just what I needed.
I admire your perseverance and resilience and it seems that your early diligence in studying really spills over and benefits your writing. I have seen most of your posts on discrimination in the writing world unless there are some I am not able to see. Thanks so much for all the encouragement you offer always and particularly in this post. Our journeys are all different but the difficulties sometimes somewhat similar. A victory for one is a possible victory for many. Onward.
As a young Gen Xer, I made the mistake of an MFA that so many writers my age made. It taught me absolutely nothing about the publishing world of today. As frustrating as I find the "influencer" side of finding an audience today, the old literary journal paradigm always felt like an elitist scam as well. I'm just encouraged to find that people are reading, no matter the format, and anything we can do to revitalize the fire of American letters I'm in full support of. Thank you for sharing your experience navigating these waters.
Weird, I was subscribed and even liked and commented on this post…. Only to see you pop up again as a recommended subscribe; and I WASN’T subscribed anymore. (WTH?)
So, I have subscribed again. I hope you haven’t lost any other subscribers lately. I’ve been hearing some accounts losing subscribers like that.
I love reading these kinds of success stories! I went from nobody to a marginally-successful Substacker (so still kind of nobody... but a much more purposeful and fulfilled and connected nobody, thanks to this app).
I'm writing an essay right now ('Substack Unto Death') about how this platform has structured my writing, and fired my enthusiasm by giving me readers and interesting models (like Liza) and put me in contact with brilliant creators. Writing on this platform has sustained me, through incarceration, unemployment, addiction... and now sobriety. Thanks, Substack!
👏👏👏 Such an inspiring article, Liza! It tells an amazing story of how a young woman never gave up in the face of frustration, rejection, disappointment, ridicule, and despair and grew her Substack page into a massive platform with 20,000+ subscribers! In 2015, you started out as a blogger with a page called Pens and Poison. But it didn’t work out as not many people read your stuff, your were forced to write about trendy and silly topics and your immature and ignorant peers made fun of your old fashioned writing style. On a side note, people need to stop saying college is an adult environment. It’s not, college kids are no more mature than high schoolers are. College is essentially just an extension of high school just more expensive.
But returning to the topic at hand, you got tired of all this nonsense and gave up on the blog. Your poetry also kept getting negative reviews and your first novel Man a Museum got rejected. So you gave up on writing as you had bills and students loans to pay. You decided the time for dream chasing was over. It was time to be practical and take a new direction that you could actually earn a living off of. That’s why you decided to start Invictus Prep. Your business thrived and you genuinely loved doing it. But you came to feel burned out and still loved writing. You had a chance conversation with another writer on a rooftop and he introduced you to the idea of writing a newsletter. So you revived Pens and Poison and sent your writing out to see if anyone might be interested in publishing it.
Two smaller publications picked up your pieces back to back and it was a huge win for you that gave you a major confidence boost. Also, your magnum opus on Substack Leave Literature Alone, blew up and has reached previously unimaginable heights today with thousands of likes and shares and hundreds of comments. The stuff you posted after that didn’t do as well but it didn’t discourage you, and diligence matched with dreams in time turned Pens & Poison into a substantial publication and the Boston Globe of all people reached out to you to bring you on as a freelance writer.
You continue to work to get one of your two novels published and there is still a ways to go. But you’ve come quite far indeed and Pens and Poison has risen to heights you never could’ve of dreamed of all those years ago in college when you were just a blogger with a dream and passion. You absolutely killed it with this article, Liza and reminded us all why we should never give up on the things that matter most to us. We can succeed if we believe in ourselves and keep working it at it. Don’t listen to the naysayers and the snarky comments from the peanut gallery they don’t matter or determine your worth as a person or professionally in a given field. Just propel yourself forward, keep chugging along and never, ever think that you don’t have what it takes! Give yourself a chance and believe me someone will give you a chance and other people will appreciate your work!
In closing, I wanted to provide everyone with a reading list for beginners that I thought up to help them to develop a love of literature and to combat the woke garbage forced into English classes these days:
• Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
• The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• The Great Gatsby: The Only Authorized Edition by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Collected Poems of John Keats by John Keats
• The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
• The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Dracula by Bram Stroker
• The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
• Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life by Barbara J. Fields and Karen E. Fields
• Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism by Ibn Warraq
• Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism by Camille Paglia
• Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Thomas Sowell
• Why Not Capitalism? by Jason Brennan
• Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth by Noa Tishby
• A Disease in the Public Mind: A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War by Thomas Fleming
• Shame: How America’s Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country by Shelby Steele
• Antisemitism: Here and Now by Deborah E. Lipstadt
• Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me by Wilfred Reilly
• America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything by Christopher F. Rufo
• The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism by Kevin D. Williamson
• The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire by H.W. Crocker III
Sounds like you were a "failed writer" not because you are not a good writer but because it is really hard to get the visibility needed to get the attention necessary to launch a career or a viable platform that will allow you to make money off of it. Without that one essay that gave you visibility, you would likely be in the same place you were in 2023. And that is the real problem, breaking through the noise to get something one writes enough attention to kind of put you on the map. Obviously one has to be able to follow it up with other quality stuff to keep attention, but man that first barrier is a killer.
How about short stories? I do absurdist short fiction. It can be a little bleak, but tinged and dipped in humanity to make it ache just a bit. It about communicating the deepest struggles of people and how that carves us into beautiful sculptures of humanity. If you have a moment here is the story of Eddy Lockless. An unlucky man that the universe beat into its comfy couch. When it stopped his problems began.
If you find the characters interesting or the ideas sticky please interact, question, restack and subscribe for the follow up.
https://open.substack.com/pub/misissyphus/p/the-possessing-bb1?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=5v5aa8
🌲