Science, SpongeBob, and the strange poetry of profanity It's called a Grawlix #writingcommunity  #booksky #amwriting  #writing Unfettered Treacle on Substack There’s a SpongeBob SquarePants episode called Sailor Mouth where SpongeBob and Patrick discover “bad words” written on the back of a dumpster and decide they must be sentence enhancers. They start using them everywhere, on the street, at the Krusty Krab, until Mr. Krabs loses his mind. It’s one of my favorite pieces of television about language. Even as a cartoon joke, it nails the strange power of profanity: we all know these words are “bad,” yet they’re some of the most expressive tools in the box.

And yes, that’s exactly as messed up as it sounds. Photo by Oxana Melis on Unsplash #writingcommunity  #booksky #amwriting  #writing Unfettered Treacle on Substack I was today years old when I found out that people in jail and prison are being billed for their incarceration.Not the phone calls. Not the ramen packets or toothpaste. I’m talking about the stay itself.They call it Pay-to-Stay. It sounds like a luxury hotel chain gone sideways, except the points don’t get you free nights, they get you lifelong debt. I’m flabbergasted. In many states, inmates are charged daily “room and board” fees, anywhere from $20 to $60 a day.

How I Learned to Stop Counting Words and Just Write (Mostly) Photo by Julia Joppien on Unsplash #writingcommunity  #booksky #amwriting  #writing Unfettered Treacle on Substack A friend asked me the other day, hi Leah, about my process. Do I set goals for writing? Word counts? Daily targets? It’s probably worth talking about. I’ve tried setting word goals. I even read 2,000 to 10,000: How to Write Faster, Write Better, and Write More of What You Love by Rachel Aaron. It didn’t stick. One time, I wrote five thousand words on back-to-back days, but that was pure adrenaline.

How the race for grant money hollowed out the mission of Land Grant universities Photo by Abhi Umrawal on Unsplash #writingcommunity  #booksky #amwriting  #writing Unfettered Treacle on Substack Land-grant universities were supposed to be our great equalizers.Public institutions where knowledge served everyone, not just those who could afford it. They were built on an idea so simple it feels almost quaint now. If you give people access to research and education, the whole state rises with them. Somewhere between the soybean yield trials and the supercomputers, the mission changed.

Why readers are ready for mashups and how to make them work #writingcommunity  #booksky #amwriting  #writing Unfettered Treacle on Substack For years the common wisdom was don’t tell anyone you’re blending genres. If you admitted your book was half-romance, half-sci-fi, the theory went, you’d lose both camps. Romance readers would turn away at the rockets, sci-fi readers would wrinkle their noses at the kissing, and you’d be left standing alone at the bookstore signing table. That was then. Now? Readers are swimming in mashups. Zombies crash Jane Austen’s tea parties. Witches solve cozy mysteries.

On attention, outrage, and the slow death of thoughtful conversation Photo by Jamie Haughton on Unsplash #writingcommunity  #booksky #amwriting  #writing Unfettered Treacle on Substack I’ve listened to my share of Joe Rogan podcasts. He’s a decent interviewer, can ask good questions, lets guests talk, seems genuinely curious. You can tell he’s being himself, for better or worse. He’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but at least there’s an honest curiosity there, a desire to learn something. But he is not a giant of intellect either. Most of his interviews are actually with other comedians.

Writing Is About Making People Feel Something Photo by Emilia Rahmatullina on Unsplash #writingcommunity  #booksky #amwriting  #writing Unfettered Treacle on Substack When you peel away all the tricks and techniques, fiction comes down to one thing: making the reader feel. It’s not to admire your clever sentences. Not marvel at your worldbuilding. Not nod along at your carefully researched magic system. Feel. That’s the target every time, joy, dread, longing, sorrow, awe, laughter. The rest is scaffolding. Here’s the part I had to learn the hard way, emotions don’t arrive because you…

The danger of letting AI curate our reality Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash #writingcommunity  #booksky #amwriting  #writing Unfettered Treacle on Substack Let’s talk about the slow, sneaky shift in how people are getting their news. Everybody’s buzzing about AI news feeds, aggregators, bots that “keep you informed while you sip your coffee.” Handy, sure. But there’s a hitch, where do you think those bots get their news? From us. And by “us,” I don’t mean me and my half-finished sci-fi draft. I mean human reporters. Journalists who still show up at city hall meetings, sift through court records, chase down reluctant sources, and occasionally get yelled at on the phone for asking too many questions.

And you’ll love every second of it. Why Writers Love Unreliable Narrators Photo by Waldemar Brandt on Unsplash #writingcommunity  #booksky #amwriting  #writing Unfettered Treacle on Substack There is an ancient story from the Indian subcontinent. A group of blind men are brought to an elephant. One feels the broad side and declares the elephant is a wall. Another touches the tusk—clearly a spear. The trunk? Obviously a snake. The leg? A tree. The ear? A fan. The tail? A rope. Each of them is partly right. None of them is completely right.

Why we can’t outsource connection to a screen Photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash #writingcommunity  #booksky #amwriting  #writing Unfettered Treacle on Substack I read a fascinating piece Saturday by Ted Gioia about David Foster Wallace, how, long before smartphones or social media, he predicted the addictive pull of screens and the loneliness and depression that would follow. It’s remarkable how right he was. I’ll be 61 next weekend, and the older I get the more obvious it becomes: you can’t live well staring at a screen all day. Zoom calls and text threads aren’t the same as looking someone in the eye, sharing a meal, or getting outside to do something.

Tricks for keeping the in-between scenes alive #writingcommunity  #booksky #amwriting  #writing Unfettered Treacle on Substack I’ll confess something. I’m smack in the middle of one of those “boring” stretches in my own manuscript right now. The good stuff is already sketched in my head. I can see the big confrontation, the heist, the fireworks. But to get there, I’ve got this stretch of story that connects some of the pieces but feels like driving through Kansas. And I keep thinking, why does it have to be this way? Why do we treat boring parts like a toll booth between the exciting ones?

Rethinking success before someone else defines it for you Photo by Chad Stembridge on Unsplash #writingcommunity  #booksky #amwriting  #writing Unfettered Treacle on Substack How do you measure success? And by whose standard? For me, one obvious milestone was earning a spot at the U.S. Air Force Academy. By the standards of my younger self, that was the dream. I graduated, went into active duty, and eventually spent thirty-two years flying, twenty of them in the reserves, culminating as commander of a flying operations group. By most accounts, that’s a successful career.

When Fictional Bite Meets the Narrative Dentist Bill #writingcommunity  #booksky #amwriting  #writing Unfettered Treacle on Substack Violence sells. Books, movies, video games, you name it. If there’s blood, somebody’s making money off it. But writing violence is tricky business, because the moment you put it on the page you’re playing with fire. Done badly, it’s boring or cartoonish. Done lazily, it glamorizes harm. Done well, it reshapes the story and the character in ways that stick with the reader. So how do we avoid turning violence into empty spectacle? Violence Shapes Culture…

Lake Street Dive, Lawrence, and a theater with more magic than Miller High Life ever bottled #writingcommunity  #booksky #amwriting  #writing Unfettered Treacle on Substack Earlier this year we found out Lake Street Dive was playing sort of nearby. And by “nearby,” I mean a four-hour drive. That’s what counts as local in the Midwest. We’d seen them two years ago and they were phenomenal, so it didn’t take a lot of convincing. Then we looked up who was opening. A band called Lawrence. Never heard of them. That’s always a little dicey.

Or, How to Make Worldbuilding Feel Like Dessert, Not Vegetables #writingcommunity  #booksky #amwriting  #writing Unfettered Treacle on Substack Too much exposition is like being cornered at a party by a guy who says, “Let me tell you about my D&D campaign.” Ten minutes later, you’re still nodding politely while he’s explaining the mechanics of elven tax law. You’re not listening. You’re planning your escape route. That’s the danger of exposition in fiction. We’ve all done it. We’ve built this whole intricate world in our heads, and when we sit down to write, the instinct is to dump it all out on the page, …

A writing community for November and beyond #writingcommunity  #booksky #amwriting  #writing Unfettered Treacle on Substack Hey all you writers out there! It’s that time of year again. I wrote about NaNoWriMo and Novel November here. But my good friend Leah Salyer and I wanted to bring back the community energy that Novel November doesn’t quite have, so we (mostly Leah, hats off) built our own space: 50K Word Nerds. We’d love to write alongside you this month! Join us for writing sprints, encouragement, a few evergreen writing modules…

Bros, Swifties, and the Culture Clash #writingcommunity  #booksky #amwriting  #writing Unfettered Treacle on Substack Celebrities are our modern gladiators. They perform, we cheer, we gossip, and then—when they misstep—we sharpen the knives. Social media makes it worse. It’s like everyone has a front-row seat and a rotten tomato in hand, just waiting for the signal to throw. Take the Travis Kelce/Taylor Swift marriage frenzy. Half the internet is planning the wedding menu, the other half is already workshopping breakup-album titles. Then there’s the loud middle, locked in debate: is Travis smart enough for her?

A writing community for November and beyond #writingcommunity  #booksky #amwriting  #writing Unfettered Treacle on Substack Hey all you writers out there! It’s that time of year again. I wrote about NaNoWriMo and Novel November here. But my good friend Leah Salyer and I wanted to bring back the community energy that Novel November doesn’t quite have, so we (mostly Leah, hats off) built our own space: 50K Word Nerds. We’d love to write alongside you this month! Join us for writing sprints, encouragement, a few evergreen writing modules…

The joy of reckless writing lives on Photo by Ajay Deewan on Unsplash #writingcommunity  #booksky #amwriting  #writing Unfettered Treacle on Substack I first attempted National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, for the uninitiated) back in 2010. My project was called Revelation Void, which sounds far more finished than it ever was. I managed to hammer out 50,000 words that November, technically a win, but I didn’t finish the novel. I crossed the line exhausted, clutching a half-formed story and far too many coffee receipts. Every year after that, I tried again.

Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Black Sabbath #writingcommunity  #booksky #amwriting  #writing Unfettered Treacle on Substack I’ve had a strange road with music. As a kid, it wasn’t all that important. We had a fading stereo console that sounded like its speakers were running a metaphysical obstacle course, and AM radio was king. My mom owned exactly one truly great album, Not Fragile by Bachman Turner Overdrive, and I wore out “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet.” But if you’d asked ten-year-old me my favorite singer, I’d have said Shaun Cassidy.

The Sneaky Joy of Surprising, Yet Inevitable #writingcommunity  #booksky #amwriting  #writing Unfettered Treacle on Substack Bad plot twists are like soggy fries. You expect crispy, salty glory, and instead you get limp disappointment. Readers know this pain. We’ve all been there. The long-lost evil twin who parachutes into the story with perfect hair and zero warning. The “it was all just a dream” ending that makes you want to demand a refund from the author personally. Or the Scooby-Doo finale, where masks come off so fast you half expect the dog to turn out to be the butler.

A masterclass in wasting your time (kindly) #writingcommunity  #booksky #amwriting  #writing Unfettered Treacle on Substack Two months ago, I was sitting on a mountain of Substack drafts, enough to last me … well, two months. You can do the math. Two whole months of posts scheduled. I thought I was a genius. “This Substack thing is easy,” I said to myself smugly. Fast forward and I’ve hit the end of that queue. Do you know how many posts I have left in the hopper right now? Zero. Nada. Nothing. So, here’s a post … about nothing.

The Ultimate Long-Form Character Development Arc #writingcommunity #booksky💙📚🪐 #amwriting #writing Unfetterred Treacle You don’t stay married for nearly 30 years without learning a few things. Sometimes the easy way, sometimes the “oops-I-shouldn’t-have-said-that” way. Relationships are funny things, full of joy, compromise, miscommunication, shared coffee hot drink orders (my wife hates coffee,) and the occasional strategic blanket tug. 1. Honesty Really Is the Best Policy It sounds basic, but it’s the bedrock. You can’t build anything lasting if you’re constantly trying to remember what version of the truth you told. My wife and I don’t lie to each other.