Forgive me, but I must begin by complaining about our digital masters, of the email sub-type.

The latest word from the people trying to turn email into a "closed garden"¹, namely Google and Microsoft, is that the best way to ensure "deliverability" is to make sure you post to your subscribers regularly, preferably at least monthly. For those not into the finer points of email, poor deliverability means that Google might route a message into the Spam or Promotions folder, and Microsoft might do that or worse by deciding to save space and send it to write-only memory².

This conflicts with my feeling that newsletters should arrive only when the sender has something of some substance to say. Fortunately, it seems like that happens about every two months, which might not be regular enough to avoid the trash bin, but it's better than nothing. I suppose now I will have to come up with something non-trivial at double my previous pace. Fun times.

And Now, Some Substance

The good news is that despite my complaints, I actually have something to say this time: I have finally found a satisfying ending to my novel. The one or two of you who follow the "No Hook" podcast I've been doing with Michael Pinkus know that I've been searching for that ending since the beginning of the year. In our last episode I speculated that in absolute frustration I might not even plot it out, that I might try just writing and ending and make it up as I went along (we call this "pantsing" derived from seat-of-the-pants).

Well as it turns out I'm still not a pantser. However a week ago I started plotting the ending out in earnest, and it wound up looking like a flowchart. I had branches for cases where each possible plot development happened or didn't happen. I eliminated all the dead-end or contrived branches and got it down to about four alternatives, none of which really nailed it. Then I started shuffling some of the events around, cussing at the screen, and having the occasional crisis of confidence—am I really capable of doing this?

It was this morning when it clicked. Just one new plot element and one of those alternatives actually delivered an ending that made sense. I got to discard all but one of the possible plot branches and with a few refinements I have it, a plot ending I'm happy with!

Depending on how long you've been a subscriber or following me in other ways, most of you probably have an idea of how long it has taken me to find a good ending for this story. So long I'm not even going to try to calculate it. This makes it hard to express just how happy I am right now. Barring some improbable disaster, I'm going to be able to have a complete draft of this story soon!

From there, there's a pile of notes and smaller edits I need to go through, then another read-through before sending it off for a development edit. When that's done, the rest will run on a relatively predictable timeline and I'll be able to set a realistic release date. I can hardly wait. Ironically, I will also likely have something of substance to say each month too! Take that, Big Email.

The Podcast Continues

Michael and I will record episode 15 of our "Two Writers, no Hook" podcast this coming Monday, which means we've been updating each other on our work for 30 weeks now (the first two weren't recorded). Much to our surprise, some people even seem to watch us, which is a little funny because the real purpose of the show is to put our goals out there in public. My guess is that if you're not an author, our clips are boring as hell, and if you do write, they're merely dull with the occasional interesting bit. No matter, they serve as a motivational tool for both of us, and that's proved to be really helpful. I post each update on my blog at alanlangford.com.

Speaking of Blogs

For a bunch of reasons, I've stopped posting on Substack. Anything I have to say will be posted on my site.

What I've Been Reading

Writer stuff. I just plowed through "On Being (and Becoming Again) a Writer" by Ron Collins. I funded his Kickstarter project and read it cover to cover as soon as I could. Definitely worthwhile. I expect it will be available through retail outlets soon, if it isn't already.

Thanks!

Thanks for reading all the way down to this point. I love feedback. You can send me a note by hitting reply.

Closing Image

Where I lift stuff that made me laugh and share it.

Notes:

1. A closed garden is one of those places with high fences, and barbed wire, where people serve as money plants, a corporate garden.
2. I've seen this happen. An algorithm decides the message is so bad that you don't even need to see it in your junk folder. This is insane.