A New Season Begins

Reflections on Writing

Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash

My dear readers,

One thing I’ve enjoyed about writing this substack (as haphazardly as I have been writing it) is how it has allowed me to stop (mostly) chasing numbers.

Being a writer these days is a funny thing. You have to have a platform in order to do well while writing. Some publishers won’t even consider you if your platform isn’t big enough. I remember once presenting at a conference nearly a decade ago. When the panel I was a part of was over an editor from one of the bigger Catholic publishing houses approached me and gave me their card. They were interested in doing a book based in part on my talk. So after the conference I emailed them and they saw how dismal my sales were for On the Edges of Elfland and weren’t ready to invest in me. They suggested I do a podcast, get on other people’s podcasts, write more blogs, increase my platform and come back to them in six months. I didn’t go back. I had just started working full-time for the first time in my life (doing non-stop schooling from age 5 to age 28 meant doing a lot of part-time work). I knew there was no way I could build that platform. Heck, I was already writing for Patheos Catholic and the time and was lucky if I managed 1000 views a month (not nearly enough to reach their threshold for paying).

If anything, my platform has shrunk since then. Still, I’ve managed to put out 3 books of poetry since then (all of them performing better than my novel or my dissertation, but still not well enough). I even tried building my platform, I started writing for other publications, U.S. Catholic and Messy Jesus Business chief amongst them, and those guys paid! But still, people weren’t flocking to my website in droves. Nor were they buying my books.

There were some dark days in there. 2020 was a particularly bad year for me (as it was for millions of others). But it also saw my family move once again to some place none of us had ever been before and now, slowly and quietly, we’ve been building a life here. I’ve even been writing for my diocesan magazine, which has been wonderful.

You see, any more, to be a writer of any note you’ve either got to be personally good and marketing yourself or willing to pay someone else to do it for you. I’m not very good at the former and I’m too cheap to do the latter. And yet, I’ve still been writing. Oh nothing like so frequently as I would like. I’m sure more discipline on my part would certainly help. But I’ve also reached a point in my career as a writer where I want to focus on doing the things I want to do, writing about the topics I want to write about, and still be able to work so I can provide for my family.

Over Lent, I took a break from social media. I can’t say I always filled the time I had spent doom scrolling well. In fact, there were certainly times where I filled it in even more insidious ways. But there is something I learned during that time off of social media. My mind was freed up to think and write and read again. I started a book club for parents of my students (we’ve just finished That Hideous Strength and getting ready to read both Leisure the Basis of Culture and The Abolition of Man); I finished reading Andrew Peterson’s delightful Wingfeather Saga (always staying a book behind my son Theodore who has now moved onto The Mysterious Benedict Society); and I’ve started writing again. Poetry has gone to one side for now, though I have some hopes for new works in the future, but fiction has come back with a vengeance.

I think since I published On the Edges of Elfland back in 2016, I have made six or seven starts on new novels, all of which petered out after 5000 words or so. As some of you know, I did recently write a dark fantasy/horror short story and have submitted it to a few magazines, so we’ll see what happens there. But what is really exciting is that since March began, I have written just over 20,000 words on a new novel. To put that in perspective for those who don’t think in terms of word counts that’s just over 57 pages double-spaced (Times New Roman, 12pt). I am very excited about this new story. Those who have read the first chapter have been very enthusiastic about it.

You see, one of the things I’ve learned is that I can’t write and chase the numbers. I held onto social media as a way of sharing my writing. But the algorithms keep changing and they make it harder for people to post links and have their work discovered. It has to happen more organically now. I have to connect more directly with readers and if they like what they read, hopefully they’ll share it with others. This doesn’t mean I can’t or shouldn’t be more intentional about how I use my social media, but it does mean that I’ve got to let go of the notion that I can share my work enough on more websites and I’ll finally get the numbers (and therefore the acclaim) I need (and by need I really just mean want).

This is very freeing, by the way. And it gives me some space to just write for a while. And that’s all I really want, just to write, and hopefully bring some light or joy or beauty or truth to those who choose to read what I have written.

It is also a little terrifying. It means surrendering control. I can’t control you, my readers. I can’t make you open these emails when they come through. I can’t make you share my posts. I can’t make you buy my books. All I can do is keep writing and keep sharing what I’ve written.

Now normally this is where I’d ask for your support. And I do want it. If you want to give me money to keep writing, please do so. If you want to share the posts or books or poems I’ve written that have been meaningful to you please do so. And know, that at some point in the future, I will more directly ask for your help. But right now, all I want to do is say thank you. The only reason I’ve kept writing all these years is because of you. You’ve kept me at it. So thank you!

What’s in store for the future? Who knows? If God continues to grace me with ideas and the limited talent I have to convey them, then I’m going to keep doing so. If I finish this new novel and it finds a publisher (as I hope it will) then I’ll be sharing that with you as well. If you have things you want to see me write about, then let me know. You can contact me through my website here: https://www.davidrussellmosley.com/contact. But I’m going to keep looking for those moments of wonder in my life, in literature, in theology, and everywhere in between. Because that’s what this is all about for me, enjoying and spreading the wonder of God’s great cosmos and all the people who fill it.

Gerard Manley Hopkins has a wonderful poem called “God’s Grandeur”. If you’ve been part of the re-enchantment movements you’ve likely read the opening line innumerable times, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” What perhaps has often been missing is the rest of the poem. Hopkins tells us that the world is so charged, that his grandeur right there beneath the surface. But in the middle of the poem, he reminds us that we have done what we can to cover it up.

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

We have hidden the grandeur of God, he’s allowed us to do so. And we have to deal with that. But it is there all the same. We simply need, as Coleridge once said, “eyes to see and hearts to understand.” That’s been the mission of everything I’ve ever written, to help us open our eyes, to clean them, to put on corrective lenses so we can see more clearly. We’ll never see in full, not on this side of the resurrection, or at least not for long. But maybe, just maybe we can get a glimpse, like a smell of salt on the air that tells us, however lost we are, that the sea isn’t too far away.

So keep your eyes open, and maybe, just maybe, the one who joined the whole cosmos to himself by taking on our humanity will help you just taste the goodness that is here and still to come.

Sincerely,
David

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