Always Be Closing

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Welcome to October 2025. Maybe your pumpkin spice latte be forever fresh and tasty. Thank you to new patrons.

Writing is like anything else in life. The more you put into it, the more you’ll get out of it. I know plenty of writers who complain about their lack of progress in publishing or even in just feeling satisfaction with their own work.

They wonder when their big break will come. When they’ll receive recognition for the beauty of their minds or when they’ll strike it rich.

But if I ask them what they’ve been doing to improve their chances for improvement—have they been taking classes, reading craft books, finding reviewers for their work—I often get a blank stare.

Indeed, they’re too busy to spend time working on their craft. They have families and bills and emotional things. Of course, all writers have these issues. The difference is that published authors acknowledge that it’s a war that must be fought on all fronts at once.

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I’m doing three things to help writers develop over the next few weeks. (1) First, I’m doing a seminar on increasing and sustaining our motivation to write; (2) I’m doing a free short live craft Q&A, most likely October 9^th or 10^th around 7pm EST; and (3) I’ll soon be starting my annual Quick Hitter craft series here on Substack.

Enroll in the motivation seminar here.

Be on the lookout for the live Q&A next week. You know those “So and so is live now….” posts you see on the Substack app? It’ll look like that. I don’t think it works if you’re not on the app. Quite a few people has said their interested in it, so I’m hoping for a good turnout.

Although many of the Quick Hitter craft posts will be available to free subscribers of Sitting in Silence, I highly recommend becoming a paid subscriber for the Quick Hitter series. That way you’ll get full access to the patron-only posts and the full nearly FOUR YEARS of archives. And, of course, the good nature of paid subscribers make this space available for everyone. I’ve already seen folks signing up the past week or so. They may have missed out last year but won’t let that happen again. Rock on.*

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