SPAWN Office Hours #119
Pirate hours every Thursday from 6pm-7pm BST or 7-8pm CET onwards. Get over here with your comments, questions and support.
We’re here for our weekly writing community! Here for you to check in and let us know what you’re up to and how you’re doing.
Here’s one of my latest podcast episode:
Welcome to SPAWN, Substack Pirate After Work Network. We’re here on Thursdays 6pm BST UK, 7pm CET. For those who are unable to join live, post a question out of hours and tick the box to have it on Notes so you get more chances for an answer.
If you’re here for the first time introduce yourself. Ideally, answer questions from others and engage with newcomers and veteran stackers.
I’ll start us off with a few questions/tasks for today’s SPAWN:
1). A memory of an amazing food you’ve eaten and the taste is still vivid in your mind. It could be your grandma’s apple pie, or mum’s meatballs, or a tarte de citron you had in Paris. Share where, what and who with.
2). Have you thought of treating your book or the writing project you’re on as an entity that has it’s own soul, mind and someone you can converse with? If so, how does that convo go. If not, is this too much woo-woo or will you try it out and let us know how that’s working out for your writing?
3). Have you used the Reply Rules Substack has set up? What do you make of it?
SPAWN has its own section on my publication. You can access all previous sessions with a wealth of resources, hands on information, hacks and tips from writers and creatives who’ve been doing what they do for a long while. Posts older than two weeks get archived and are fully accessible to paid members.
SPAWN is Office Hours and hang out with Writer Pilgrim by So Elite and our lovely crew. We’ll talk all things Substack that we love or don’t understand. The floor is always open to your questions and invite your subscribers and followers here too.
Another regular feature on my publication is the monthly Song Title poetry first Friday of the month and the weekly Prompt Station with a writing prompt released every Tuesday. And look at my podcast Writer Pilgrim Sounds that now includes videos too of London’s hidden amazing places, poetry and interviews with some super amazing artists. I hope you join for those too.
We are live for an hour and many stay for longer. Mostly, we chat about writing and Substacking; we celebrate each other’s successes and find new readers and subscribers in the process. Before we go on to this week’s SPAWN here’s what we did last week and make sure you check the comments as there are some useful resources in there:
Naturally comments spill outside the live hour because our community is all over the world. You’re welcome to join pre or after hours. We have novel, short story, poetry, non-fiction and travel writers, podcasters, youtubers and journalists. Between us, we solve most questions.
Comment about what’s been eating you on Substack and what’s been good this week. Share your questions and achievements and socialise with us.
Everyone’s welcome to join the conversation. Politeness and kindness are our rules. Offer advice if you can, no guesswork and no spammers. Our readers and SPAWN are a supportive community and many of us support one another outside this weekly event.
Thank you for turning up each week and for returning to Late Night Spawn to support and reply to writers and creators who turn up after hours to our events.
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Hello Everyone,
Well, I'm not sure what happened, but I did not receive the email about this weeks SPAWN but at least I know where it lives.
Its been a bit hectic week here as I am ramping up for the annual Princess cruises 3 Day Sale, so there is lots of conversations to have. And in case you are curious, not all the best deals are on sale. I just booked a fantastic cruise from Vancouver to Auckland next year and we are looking forward to staying with our son after the cruise for a week or so. (He's moving to Auckland in November).
Anyway, on to the questions:
1. Amazing food - where do I even begin? My mom's strawberry-rhubarb pie and apple crisp. Decadent pear-shaped cheesecake in Ponta Delagada, Black forest cake in Germany, hot dogs in Iceland, (Yes, really), and various seafood and steak in Australia. In Scotland, it has to be whiskey, now that I found one I like!
2. I haven't really thought of having my books talk back to me but I do know it is a challenge to get those conversations out of my head and onto the paper without loosing the words or flow. I guess that's what multiple edits are for.
3. Reply rules - I guess that would imply that you get enough comments to warrant categorizing them 🤣
In other news, my husband is almost fully healed from his bike accident and has started some physio and I am still plugging away at edits/adding stuff for my travel memoir.
I look forward to reading the other comments.
Sorry for missing the Late Night train… it didn’t click that I missed this until this morning and I’m like wait, where is it? Only a day behind I guess. The collaboration is still open if anyone wants to participate in it (and happens to see this, given I’m a day late to the party). Many thanks to both Chris and Writer Pilgrim for writing something!
Onto the questions:
1). A memory of an amazing food you’ve eaten and the taste is still vivid in your mind. It could be your grandma’s apple pie, or mum’s meatballs, or a tarte de citron you had in Paris. Share where, what and who with.
This morning, I am missing the 49ers pancakes from The House of Pancakes chain in Southern California. Very simple thing crepe like things, to which you spread on butter and let it swim in real maple syrup. Soo good.
2). Have you thought of treating your book or the writing project you’re on as an entity that has it’s own soul, mind and someone you can converse with? If so, how does that convo go. If not, is this too much woo-woo or will you try it out and let us know how that’s working out for your writing?
I think about my book a lot … but I get “niggles” if something is on the wrong track, but Panawr from “Obsidian and Flame” actually started berating me for the original ending. It ballooned from 7 parts to 20 parts as a result and I need to have another season of it to wrap up their story.
3). Have you used the Reply Rules Substack has set up? What do you make of it?
I need to go check to see if it’s activated, because I did report Emma Horsedick (was anyone else here affected by that?) for spam last year and apparently once you report spam in a comment or note, it’s turned on. But given that was so long ago, I doubt that it is. There are also some exceptions to the rule as well, so it’s worth giving the support article a peek. I’m entering my fourth year in this long serial fiction story, and so far, aside from Ms. Emma, I have not had any issues. I do block and mute people on Notes, however. I think it’ll help prevent some of the abuse I’ve heard about happening to people here, although as it doesn’t seem to cover DMs, perhaps not entirely.