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Matt Wilven

@mattwilven.bsky.social

66 followers 70 following 37 posts

Novelist | The Blackbird Singularity & Farzaneh and the Moon | Now serialising SHOW HOME, a new psychological thriller 👉 mattwilven.com

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Matt Wilven @mattwilven.bsky.social · 8d

SHOW HOME - Chapter 1 is live.
A psychological thriller about a family, an intelligent house, and the price you pay for a frictionless life.
Read it here: thewritinglab.substack.com/p/show-home-...

Matt Wilven @mattwilven.bsky.social · 1d

SHOW HOME - Chapter 2 is live.

A psychological thriller about a family, an intelligent house, and the price of a frictionless life.

Read it here:
mattwilven.com/p/show-home-chapter-two

Matt Wilven @mattwilven.bsky.social · 1d

I cut this line from my opening paragraph in chapter 1 last week:

"The light coming in off the peat had the flat sheen of brushed steel."

Unique image. Showing, not telling. So, why did I cut it?

mattwilven.com/p/show-home-629

#amwriting #PsychologicalThriller #indieauthor

SHOW HOME

The Arrival

mattwilven.com

Matt Wilven @mattwilven.bsky.social · 4d

Control is just anxiety in a suit.

Matt Wilven @mattwilven.bsky.social · 8d

SHOW HOME - Chapter 1 is live.
A psychological thriller about a family, an intelligent house, and the price you pay for a frictionless life.
Read it here: thewritinglab.substack.com/p/show-home-...

Matt Wilven @mattwilven.bsky.social · 10d

Something new begins Sunday 👁️ thewritinglab.substack.com

Matt Wilven @mattwilven.bsky.social · 15d

link in bio 👍

Matt Wilven @mattwilven.bsky.social · 15d

This week I sent some of my closest friends my Substack link. It was a scary step but I’m glad I’ve taken it. It’s increased my anxiety around posting but that’s because it’s made my small list of subscribers more real. It’s good to remember that sharing work is a humbling and vulnerable process.

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Matt Wilven @mattwilven.bsky.social · 15d

Seven years have passed since I finished my last novel. This is the story of what happened in the silence, and why I’m writing again.
👉 thewritinglab.substack.com/p/on-the-seven-year-silence

Matt Wilven @mattwilven.bsky.social · 18d

An AOL electronic-mail address? Take my money.

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Matt Wilven @mattwilven.bsky.social · 19d

Thanks for responding. Got my bluesky wings (first real response to anything). Always worth a look - but I do have some existing relationships.

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Matt Wilven @mattwilven.bsky.social · 19d

I've decided to serialise my next novel. Is giving up 'first publishing rights' still frowned upon? I would imagine it's seen more like free marketing these days but I'm not sure. #amwriting #WriterCommunity

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Matt Wilven @mattwilven.bsky.social · 19d

Earlier this year I explored how AI could interact with literature. Some of those threads remain here (Plath, prompts) because they touch on craft as much as tech. But this feed now has a clear focus: novelist craft, process, and my new serial SHOW HOME on Substack.

thewritinglab.substack.com

The Writing Lab | Matt Wilven | Substack

A weekly newsletter from novelist Matt Wilven (The Blackbird Singularity, Farzaneh and the Moon). Serialising new fiction and sharing practical craft insights from a working novelist’s desk. Click to ...

thewritinglab.substack.com

Matt Wilven @mattwilven.bsky.social · 28d

Is your scene working? Try a 2-minute test.
This simple diagnostic shows whether your scene holds tension, or falls flat. It's a structured, reusable AI prompt, built from the same editorial systems I use on my own fiction - a free tool for writers.
thewritinglab.substack.com/p/the-art-of...

The Art of the Prompt

Brief an LLM so it reads your creative work with discipline, not flattery

thewritinglab.substack.com

Matt Wilven @mattwilven.bsky.social · 29d

AI feedback is too flattering. Editing should have teeth.

At The Writing Lab, I build tools for writers who take the craft of storytelling seriously.

Start with my free Analysis Engine. You get the copy-ready prompt & the full essay explaining the craft behind it.
open.substack.com/pub/thewriti...

Matt Wilven @mattwilven.bsky.social · Sep 15

To finish a novel requires a very specific kind of stubbornness. It's not about genius; it's about the pig-headed persistence to wrestle with your own failings until they become successes.

I wrote about the creature that gets the work done.

mattwilven.substack.com/p/only-pig-h...

Matt Wilven @mattwilven.bsky.social · Sep 14

'Everybody has a book in them' is a lie. Writing a novel requires a very specific, strange psychology. I call it being a 'pig-headed dog'. Here's what I mean... open.substack.com/pub/mattwilven…

Matt Wilven @mattwilven.bsky.social · Sep 12

I asked AI to find the 'heart' of Plath's "Daddy."

"The heart... is its brutal assertion that psychological freedom sometimes requires a violent act of symbolic murder... a furious, self-made ritual to kill the ghosts that possess us."

The full report: mattwilven.substack.com/p/can-an-ai-...

Can an AI Really Understand Poetry? An Experiment with Sylvia Plath

A deep dive into human-AI collaboration, using the an AI toolkit to analyse the dark heart of her masterpiece, 'Daddy'

mattwilven.substack.com

Matt Wilven @mattwilven.bsky.social · Sep 11

This is the future of creative partnership: a dialogue between human expertise and machine analysis. The full story - and the Plath demo that follows it - is in my latest Substack post: mattwilven.substack.com/p/can-an-ai-...

Can an AI Really Understand Poetry? An Experiment with Sylvia Plath

A deep dive into human-AI collaboration, using the an AI toolkit to analyse the dark heart of her masterpiece, 'Daddy'

mattwilven.substack.com

Matt Wilven @mattwilven.bsky.social · Sep 11

So, I fed his critique back into the AI. The new, refined analysis it produced was so insightful that he is now habitually using the prompts in his own editing process.

Matt Wilven @mattwilven.bsky.social · Sep 11

My friend was rightly skeptical of AI. I used a prompt from my Poetry Toolkit to run a deep analysis of one of his draft poems.

His first reaction: wow - I'm amazed... but then... was it critical enough? A fair question.

Matt Wilven @mattwilven.bsky.social · Sep 11

How do you convince a 73-year-old, tech-skeptical poet with 6 books to his name to start using AI?

You don't persuade him. You show him.

A short thread on what happened... 🧵

Matt Wilven @mattwilven.bsky.social · Sep 10

The new AirPods Pro 3 having Live Translate is a game-changer.

Not for international travel. I'm going to use it to finally understand my cat.

...Just tried it. He's not meowing. He's delivering a scathing critique of my next novel's pacing.

Matt Wilven @mattwilven.bsky.social · Sep 8

This is the kind of work I'll be doing every week for my community of Ambitious Creators. You can read the full piece here: substack.com/home/post/p-...

Can an AI Really Understand Poetry? An Experiment with Sylvia Plath

A deep dive into human-AI collaboration, using the an AI toolkit to analyse the dark heart of her masterpiece, 'Daddy'

substack.com

Matt Wilven @mattwilven.bsky.social · Sep 8

The full story of why I ran this test (it involves converting a 73-year-old skeptical poet) and the complete AI report is now live on my Substack. It's a deep dive for writers, readers, and Plath fans.

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Matt Wilven @mattwilven.bsky.social · Sep 8

But the real magic happened in the dialogue. When I pushed back on its reading of the poem's tone (pointing out its "grotesque playfulness"), the AI refined its analysis, acting as a true creative partner.

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