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1 week ago | 
caffeinatedwriter.substack.com | Michelle Richmond
If you like this post, you might also enjoy reading What Keeps Me Up at Night When I Think About AI. A few months ago, I decided to do a literary experiment with AI. I knew that neither ChatGPT nor Claude could write an original short story worth reading. When you ask AI to write fiction, it just feels machine-generated, much like the illustration above. This is a good thing. As a novelist, obviously, I don’t want AI to become adept at writing fiction. But could it rewrite a story?
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1 week ago | 
caffeinatedwriter.substack.com | Michelle Richmond
In her terrific collection of vignettes on writing, 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write, playwright Sarah Ruhl observes, “The art of naming a character is sacred and mysterious.” While a character’s name is important—your reader will have to live with it for the entire length of your book—don’t let naming tie you up in knots as you begin to write your novel or story. A name, like anything, can be changed in revision.
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2 weeks ago | 
caffeinatedwriter.substack.com | Michelle Richmond
I just stumbled upon this post about socializing in Spain, by the California native behind . The writer reveals that, in Spanish social gatherings, no one ever asks a newcomer, “What do you do?” She relishes “the warm, easy conversations I have in Spain, where no one cares about your job title or what you’ve achieved lately.”This brought to mind an awkward fact for writers at any American gathering among strangers.
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1 month ago | 
caffeinatedwriter.substack.com | Michelle Richmond
Sam Freedman has been teaching a class in long-form journalism at Columbia Journalism School since 1991. Students fortunate enough to be admitted to the class are challenged to “produce a book proposal to sell and hopefully publish.” I’d never heard of Freedman or the class until I read 1 Writing Class, 35 Years, 113 Deals, 95 Books, by Emma Goldberg for the New York Times. If you want to write a nonfiction book proposal, read the article.
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1 month ago | 
caffeinatedwriter.substack.com | Michelle Richmond
Everything you need to know about using Substack as an author platform. Substack Author Studio subscribers get access to my course SUBSTACK FOR AUTHORS, my 6-Week Writing Reboot, every new post on The Caffeinated Writer, the complete archives, and exclusive Q&As.Everything you need to know about using Substack as an author platform.
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1 month ago | 
caffeinatedwriter.substack.com | Michelle Richmond
This post is for Substack Author Studio members. Members of Substack Author Studio get access to my information-packed course Substack for Authors, as well as every new post on The Caffeinated Writer, the complete archives, live Q&As, and exclusive chats. Go here to subscribe. How do you write a Substack post that resonates with readers and draws new subscribers to your Substack? In this video, I share one of my most successful Substack posts, along with insights into how and why it gained traction.
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1 month ago | 
caffeinatedwriter.substack.com | Michelle Richmond
Since moving The Caffeinated Writer to Substack in 2022, I’ve received a lot of questions from writers about how to use Substack as an author newsletter. This led me to create the course Substack for Authors, in which I help writers launch their author newsletters, write engaging posts, serialize fiction or memoir, breathe new life into previously published work, and connect with new and existing readers in meaningful ways.
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1 month ago | 
caffeinatedwriter.substack.com | Michelle Richmond
Your job as a novelist is to entertain your readers. Enlighten them, sure. Wow them with beautiful sentences, yes. Give them something to think about, someone to relate to, a new way of seeing an old thing: absolutely. But job number one is to entertain. You have to give them a good story. If your novel is boring, it will be difficult for you to find an agent or publisher. If you do find a publisher, the book is unlikely to resonate with readers. Not boring your reader is half the battle.
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1 month ago | 
caffeinatedwriter.substack.com | Michelle Richmond
Thank you for reading The Caffeinated Writer. Paid subscribers can listen to this post here. “The road you can talk about is not the road you can walk on.” Lao TzuEvery now and then my husband likes to remind me what I said to him the first time I ever rode in a car with him. A truck, actually. This was in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and we’d just met a few days before. He invited me to go for a drive, and about fifteen miles into the journey he asked why I was so quiet.
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1 month ago | 
caffeinatedwriter.substack.com | Michelle Richmond
If you’ve been on Substack for a while, you might be familiar with of The Author Stack. Nohelty’s thoughtful post on walking away from a taxing creative endeavor got me to thinking about how much we try to do, and how often these competing efforts lead to burnout. After deciding to end a program called Writer MBA, which cost him money and enormous amounts of time, Nohelty writes:In influence, we succeeded wildly. In money, we failed spectacularly.
