SPAWN Office Hours #30
Pirate hours now! Get over here with your questions and support. Thursday 6pm-7pm BST and 7-8pm CET.
Welcome to SPAWN, Substack Pirate After Work Network. We’re here on Thursdays 6pm BST UK, 7pm CET. Share this post and newsletter to your friends and subscribers if you wish. 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). How do you detach from your writing in order to edit and improve it?
2). Does your inner child feature in your writing? How? What do you learn/take from it?
3). Have you ever been on a retreat or a holiday and you cannot write?
Tip: I want to share Isobel’s stack this week with wonderfully written pieces where you find food and love and everything in between. Check out and subscribe to her newish stack.
SPAWN is Office Hours and hang out with
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.Thursday 19 September
Vancouver PDT 10am -11am
Phoenix, Arizona MST 10am-11am
London BST 6pm-7pm
Paris CET 7pm-8pm
Athens EEST 8pm-10pm
New Delhi IST 10:30pm-11:30pm
Sydney AEST (20 September) 3am-4am
Fiji GMT+12 (20 September) 5am-6am
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:
Time zones differ and our community is all over the world so naturally comments spill outside the live hour. 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 others.
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.
More regular posts from Writer Pilgrim are the prompts at the Prompt Station, poetry, stories and the podcast.
1). How do you detach from your writing in order to edit and improve it?
Time away. Sometimes weeks, months or days. Depending on what it is. Leave it until I forget about it. I also use palate cleansers.... meaning I'll write something totally different to get another perspective.
2). Does your inner child feature in your writing? How? What do you learn/take from it?
I'm not sure. Everything I write is not about me. But I think reactions and thinking process is definitely influenced by my inner child. It must filter down into the writing too somehow sometimes.
3). Have you ever been on a retreat or a holiday and you cannot write?
Never been on a writer's retreat. But I've been on holiday thinking I'm going to write and nothing happened.
Hi everyone!
Wow! It's the 30th Edition already. That's amazing.
So no new post from me this week, but I have been making preparations for my one year Substack anniversary at the weekend. I have some fun things planned. If I can finish them in time! Haha.
But on to the questions... How do you detach from writing inorder to edit? I think the way to do that is just to leave it alone for a while, so you can come back to it with fresh eyes and see things you didn't see before. You have to edit as a reader, not as a writer, and make those difficult decisions about what to take out and what to change. It can be tough, because there's always going to be something you like that you want to stay. But if it's not serving the story, it has to go. It becomes easier to do that, when you've had some space from it.
Does your inner child feature in your wiritng? I hope so. I'm always having fun with the writing and trying to show that on the page, in a way that hopefully enables the reader to have fun, too.
Have you ever been on a holiday where you cannot write? Absolutely. And I think that's a positive thing. You have to take a complete break sometimes, and it's good to step away from writing every now and again, to let your creative batteries recharge, so you can come back refreshed and ready to explore new ideas.
What have you all been up to? 😎