2024 Year-End Writing Round-Up
What I published here and elsewhere this year (plus thoughts on another year of newslettering)
As the year winds down, it’s nice to look back on and round up my writing for the year. If you’re a new Counter Craft subscriber, you might find some interesting articles that you hadn’t seen before. If you’re an old subscriber, well, maybe you’ll be reminded of a post you meant to read but never got around to. Whether new or old, I thank you for subscribing and reading!
I really mean that. I’ve been honored by how this newsletter has grown over the past few years. I had little by the way of a plan when I started Counter Craft. Mostly, I just wanted a place to write about books without jumping through all the hoops of pitching, waiting, following up, pitching again, waiting again, following up, invoicing, following up on the invoice, then finally cashing a fifty dollar check some months later. I still love editors. I still think magazines that collect interesting writing on different topics from a variety of authors is an ideal literary format. But I’ll hardly shock anyone by saying that freelance writing—especially in the literary sphere—is increasingly time consuming while being decreasingly remunerative. That’s a topic for another newsletter post.
For now, I’ll say I’ve been surprised and gratified at Counter Craft’s growth. I ended 2023 with a tad over 9,000 followers. Today, I have more double that. Counter Craft is ranked as a top Substack for “Fiction,” besting some newsletters by authors dramatically more famous than me. Professors tell me they teach my articles in their creative writing classes. A couple times strangers have stopped me on the street—well, more like at literary events—to say they love this newsletter. It’s, well, quite nice. So, thank you again for reading.
Before I jump into the best of 2024, I’ll look ahead to 2025 when my novel Metallic Realms will be published. May 13th, to be precise. Metallic Realms is a weird autofiction-science-fiction-satire kind of book, but if you’re curious about that kind of thing, there’s currently a Goodreads giveaway through January 5th. (You can, of course, also preorder the novel.)
2024 Counter Craft Highlights
I publish Counter Craft roughly once a week. The following are some of my favorite and most read articles from 2024. Note that I publish all posts for free initially, but archive some older posts for paid subscribers.
Literary Essays and/or Rants
Why Your Narrator Should Be a Weird Little Freak - Literature needs fewer "likeable" characters and more assholes, weirdos, buffoons, and freaks
What Lasts and (Mostly) Doesn't Last - On the books that are remembered, rejected, repudiated, and rediscovered
Seeing with an Artist's Eye - On noticing gaps and openings in the work you love (or why critiquing things is good, actually)
Angela Carter and the "So Fucking What?" Approach to Writing - Recommending The Bloody Chamber for your October reading pile
Novels in Unusual Forms - Excellent novels that upend expectations of form and structure
The Novel as Shaggy Dog Joke - On Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine and novels whose pleasures are in denying our expectations
Craft Thoughts
The First and Best Writing Advice I Ever Received - Finish things. Just finish. Really, finish them!
Adjusting the Levels in Revision - Some thoughts on novel revision and narrative mixing
Turning Off the TV in Your Mind - Thoughts on flipping from "TV brain" to "prose brain" when writing fiction
Writing Terror into Your Horror - October horror writing advice to curdle blood and tingle spines
Dune Names Are Good, Actually - On language, names, and worldbuilding
Publishing Demystification
Yes, People Do Buy Books - Despite viral claims, Americans buy over a billion books a year (republished in Slate)
More Publishing Facts You May Not Know - Explaining some myths about publishing, books sales, and author advances
Comps and Circumstance - A short explainer on comp titles
Author Process Interviews
Lastly, I published quite a good number of author interviews in my “processing” series: Jeff VanderMeer, Rita Bullwinkel, Tony Tulathimutte, David Small, Ryan Chapman, Justin Taylor, Tracy O'Neill, Helen Phillips, and Ed Park (technically the Park interview was December 2023, but published after my 2023 round-up.)
My 2024 Writing Outside of Substack
I published less outside of this newsletter this year than most. Largely, this was because I spent much of the year revising Metallic Realms. But also I find publishing here more rewarding than other places for some reasons I mentioned above. That said, in nonfiction I did write two reviews for The New York Times: Burn Man by Mark Anthony Jarman and The Repeat Room by Jesse Ball.
In fiction, I published two new short stories:
“Sleeping Beauty and the Restless Realm” in Lightspeed (readable online)
“The Good Building” in The Southern Review (print only)
Lastly, my story about an aging werewolf was illustrated by David Small and published as the titular story in Small’s excellent illustrated collection The Werewolf at Dusk.
That’s it for my 2024. I’m sure I’ll have a bunch of new rants, craft musings, process interviews, weird book recommendations, and strange short stories to share with you in 2025. Until then, stay well, read good books, write stuff down, so on and so forth.
If you enjoy this newsletter, consider subscribing or checking out my recent science fiction novel The Body Scout—which The New York Times called “Timeless and original…a wild ride, sad and funny, surreal and intelligent”—or preorder my forthcoming weird-satirical-science-autofiction novel Metallic Realms.
thank you