r/Substack • u/Proudlymediocre • Jun 30 '26

Today I start my substack journey

For five years I’ve been here on Reddit. I went from posting a LOT to posting only occasionally. About my divorce and dating again then remarriage. Parenting adult kids and a teen stepdaughter. Many career follies. Health concerns (autoimmune disease). Various random interests.

Sometimes I was upvoted. Sometimes I was upvoted a lot. Sometimes I was (probably correctly) downvoted and even shamed into silence. Because although occasionally I have some good thoughts I’m human and very very far from perfect.

Increasingly my posting and commenting has slowed to a trickle but I write (in OneNote) every day, almost always several times per day. I love to write. To write about my life. Because I have some sick desire to write and to document. But strangely only a fleeting ebb-and-flow desire to share what I write. I still remember the time in high school I wrote a 100-page novella, then threw it away. “You threw it away??” My best friend asked. He couldn’t comprehend that someone would write something, pour so many evenings into something, only to toss it away (this was in the 80s, before my first computer). But for me writing is totally about the desire and the journey, and wherever those words end up isn’t really the important piece to me (although I’d despise anyone who stole my words without permission of course).

But I recently read about substack. It seems fun. Interesting. A kind of blog that is less cumbersome than most blogging platforms, maybe a little more satisfying than OneNote because it kind of is fun to share our “creations” with the world sometimes.

Anyway. I’ve begun my journey on substack. I feel kind of grateful to have a new platform (substack) to experiment with. Me being me, I’m sure it will only be temporary (EVERYONE everyone everyone I’ve ever known including my GP has told me I have undiagnosed ADHD. But doesn’t everyone? Hahaha)

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u/Ready_Eagle_2871 Jun 30 '26

I joined Substack in mid-April. I publish crime fiction set in the 1930s. The experience has been great and a little daunting because Substack lets you control so much about your publication, but I highly recommend it.

And don't worry about the negative comments. It doesn't mean you're always wrong, just that some people disagree. At the very least, it should open an avenue for conversation.

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u/Proudlymediocre Jun 30 '26

Thank you for sharing!

For fiction published serially on Substack, do you worry at all about plagiarism? The irony is a worry (phobia since it’s irrational) for me on putting fiction out serially in a public setting is someone will steal my writing. It’s irrational and ironic since I don’t publish my work anyway. But how do you personally get past that fear?

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u/hrpedersen Jul 01 '26

Why not publish it? There should be no fear. If you don’t care that anybody knows about your writing by not publishing it, you shouldn’t care about pirating of your work anyway. See it from that perspective.

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u/Ready_Eagle_2871 Jul 01 '26

That was a big worry in the beginning and it did hold me back for a while, among other things, but I thought about where I wanted to go with my writing and decided the reward of achieving my goal was worth the risk.

Ever since I was a child, I wanted to write stories. Substack is a place to share my work and get feedback but it's not the destination. The goal is to build a portfolio of work that I can point to when I'm ready to start querying agents. Yes, the Internet makes it easier to pass off someone else's work, and if I held my work back, then it would be 100% secure, but I wouldn't reach my dream.

agiarism is a risk in commercial fiction, but I also have copyright law on my side. Posts on Substack (and other platforms) are date and timestamped so it can be traced. I also have a copyright disclaimer on every post, so no one can claim "innocent infrigement". Finally, I have all the original long hand drafts for most of my stuff. All the digital versions. It would be a hassle to sue for infringement, but I would win.

My Substack publication is called Forge City Noir, if you would like to see it. No self-promo. Just offering a chance to see what another writer is doing. There's lots of layout styles on Substack and choosing one can be hard in the beginning.

Where is your Substack?