5 Literary Stacks We Love
Read, write, submit your work and share your recs
Hey, what’re you reading at the moment? And by reading I mean Substack. And by Substack I mean aside from the latest Forever Workshop of course.
‘Cause there’s some great stuff to be discovered. It can just be hard to sift through the thousands of notes and newsletters to find your particular jam.
So we thought we’d share some of our current faves (please tell us yours in the comments, too!).
5 Creative & Inspiring Literary Stacks:
1. “I pulled my cloak around me” is not worldbuilding
I loved this article from
on the intricacies (and sometimes laziness) of world building — mostly because it asks the same kind of pedantic (and important!) questions I do when reading a book set in another world/time/place:Who builds the roads?
How do vampires manage their finances?
What’s the latest pop culture trend in your medieval ?
There are a load more great ideas and prompts to deepen your world building here — with approaches and examples from D&D, sci fi, fantasy, romantasy and… Van Halen. Plus, my favourite: an invitation to get more weird when you literally have a free pass to make shit up (and a shout out to the amazing Scavengers Reign series).
And there’s plenty more valuable insights into “the nuts and bolts of fiction writing and the world of publishing” to be found at Craft by best-selling author
.2.
MONDAYS ARE FREE is written by award-winning poet
and poet/essayist (author of one my very favourite collections, The Book of Delights).Each week they post up five writing prompts and — clue’s in the name — Mondays are free. It’s a really effective nudge to grab a notebook and scribble something each week, and the exercises are always interesting and surprising, such as:
3.
Our beloved sister-stack and expert curators of lit mags, competitions, agents, writing opportunities — pretty much anything you could possibly wish for from the literary world, really.
Because sometimes you just want the good stuff delivered right to your face:
Tell me about that deadline I absolutely would have missed. Tell me about niche lit mags I’ve never heard of so they can become my new favourites.
Tell me which agents and indie presses are looking for manuscripts just like mine.
Tell me what lit mag editors want and how this whole submissions shebang works
They’ll even curate hand-picked lists just for you (seriously that’s pretty freaking cool)
In-val-uable. There’s a reason Sub Club is #2 on the Literature Bestseller list (watch your back, George Saunders).
4.
Or if you want to take a break from writing and just read, Three Hundred Tang Poems a little oasis of chill by
, who has taken on the task of translating one of the 300+ collection of Chinese poems from the Tang Dynasty (618-907).There’s just something magical about these glimpses into the past — a tiny moment of pause and poetic contemplation — and I always stop whatever I’m doing to read the latest one. The translation process is fascinating, and it’s remarkable how much connection can be found in poetry that was written over a thousand years ago.
Words are amazing.
Here are the opening lines from one of the latest translations:
Thin clouds are rolled up in all directions—no Milky Way in the sky;
A clear wind blows in the void, and the moon spreads in waves.
On the sandy plain, the water is at rest—no more voices and shadows;
Offering each other a glass, you must sing.
(I promise you won’t expect where this one is going — or the context behind it.)
And finally, this story just happened to cross my timeline this week and is so incredibly cool I had to share:
5. You Are A Wolf
You Are a Wolf is a piece of interactive fiction in the form of a ‘choose your own adventure’ story from
. Make your choices, follow the forked paths, and see where wolf-you ends up…Such an innovative use of Substack. And such an addictive premise that you’ll immediately want to replay to see which other endings you could have got.
This was my first introduction to The Inciting Incident, and there’s a whole lot more to explore there — a huge collection of supernatural, weird, and uncanny horror stories, plus some useful tips on writing all things spooooooky.
What Are YOUR Favourite Lit-Stacks?
Share the love and recommend what literature-related Substacks you’re reading at the moment:
Thank you for the mention, Jo, and I'm glad you are enjoying my work!
Thank you so much Jo for sharing my story 'You are a wolf'. It was a labour of love to wrangle Substack into working like a 'choose your own adventure' story (and highlighted a few bugs in the app!) but so much fun once I got it working.