My New Substack: Go Sit In The Corner
I intend for my new Substack kid to grow up kind, generous, fun, and beautiful. Too much, too meh? How about irreverent, too? Brat. Queer. Anxious. Effusive. Ridiculous. About to drop out.
Below is my long view for what content I’ll cover. Free subscribers get plenty. Paid subscribers—when I open that option—will get all plus the archive. I feel it’s fair for writers to ask to be paid for their work. I also feel it’s rewarding and generous to offer it. All things can be simultaneously true.
When I began writing for Psychology Today online about 14 years ago, I was advised: You’ll be lucky if you make enough per article to buy the cup of coffee you drank while writing it. I’m not even expecting that much. And yet, it would be kinda nice.
Go Sit In The Corner with Bradley David Waters
Writing craft: poetry, essay, micro, and unclassifiables. Crafting complex characters and voice, deepening the relationship with the reader, queering writing.
The intersection of psychology, mental health, and writing.
Writing in and about the environment and beyond-human.
Writing into absurdity, quirkiness, humor, and irreverence.
Contemplative writing practice. Tapping into our deep witness. Pausing for the story to show up.
Incorporating personal narrative in newsletters and Substack.
On putting yourself out there as an introvert. On the value & risk of being an authentic, transparent, raw, yet protective presence.
On being an outsider. On not relating to culture or what’s being talked about.
Notifications and embeds of my latest YouTube outdoor reading series. (P.S. These are not your usual poem-from-a-podium readings. If you wanna get weird & queer in your own YouTube videos, I’ll be leading by example. Trumpers and Muskets are not invited. Although, if the kink convinces them to stop being creeps…
Plus: my favorite images, quotes, opportunities, my art, my behind-the-scenes perspective as an editor, my play-by-play as my first book progresses through publishing, and whatever else I see in my corner.
P.S. Thinking about starting a Substack or newsletter of your own but anxious about not getting many subscribers/views? Perhaps feeling you don’t have much to say, it’s not worth your effort? Consider this little nugget…
I wrote that online column at Psychology Today for eleven years. In that time I wrote a few pieces that received tens of thousands of views! I also wrote many pieces that only reached a few hundred. This is tremendously humbling stuff we’re doing, so it better have some passion or purpose behind it—pushing it through the deep drifts during those hard times when it feels futile. Here’s the cool thing…
Whether a piece received thousands or hundreds, it was out in the world, beyond me, having a life of its own. It wasn’t for me to predict how it was reaching people. And turns out, it was. I still receive the occasional message from someone who came across a piece that helped or inspired them. That’s the best metric I can imagine. Many days the work we’re doing feels like nothing—until it’s suddenly something.
I once wrote a super random piece about how I cope with my fear of flying. I avoided that whole clickbait regurgitation bullshit of a great headline that’s followed by the “advice” of “just breathe.” We live in a just breathe and stay hydrated world and that’s so fucking boring. So I wrote about what I really do when I’m scared. I don’t care if it was raw and embarrassing because it actually helped people. They wrote me privately.
For most of us this is slow work. A growing body. Our early pieces might be rough little suckers. Trust me, it’s okay. It’s okay. It’s all going to be okay. Because here’s the other cool thing…
The incredible tonnage of content out there means there’s tons of bullshit. Shit tons, I’ve heard it said. If you write authentically-voiced, thoughtfully written, lived experience you will stand out. Maybe not right away, but you’ll cut through the bullshit. Be prepared for that. Your good work will be out there somewhere cutting through the bullshit. Good.
