It’s been a while since I’ve posted. That’s mainly because of life-stuff, but also because I’ve been hard at work on something new.
Starting today, but really starting on January 1st 2022, I will be doing something different and, I hope, involving, moving, enlightening.
Via Substack, the newsletter platform, I’ll be sharing A Writer’s Diary.
For quite a few years, I’ve wanted to write something where I could have the time of the reading be something like ‘real time’. For an hour of events to take an hour to read, say.
One idea was to write an extremely scary ghost story that readers could only gain access to in the haunted hours between midnight and three a.m. (Or that could only be read in a very dark room.)
With A Writer’s Diary, I’ve found a way of doing something – I hope – a little more subtle and a lot less gimmicky. If you sign up to become one of the first readers, you will see a whole year of my life play out in real time.
It’s a written year, not just my scratchings of the next twelve months. Which means things happen – big things and very little things.
I’ve put more into this book than anything else I’ve done.
When people I’ve told about it (fewer than ten) have asked me to describe it in a ‘meets’ sentence, I’ve said: ‘It’s like Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle meets Virginia Woolf’s Diary.’
Then I’ve said: ‘Look, you forced me.’
I hope it’s something you might like, if you’ve liked Starting to Write or Writing and Shit.
It’s for writers, and people who want to know what writers are really like.
Eventually, bits of it will be going behind what George Saunders calls ‘the old paywall’. But if you subscribe via this link, you’ll get whole thing for free: https://awritersdiary.substack.com/morefriends
If you like the sound of the idea, please share with your friends.
tobylitt 