FICTION Writers following Fiction Writers
This should be step one
This is www.thaddeusthomas.com
There's a basic step I think we're overlooking, but first, a gripe:
Don't get offended at what I'm about to say. You have a right to use Substack however it's meant to be used and are not limited by my tastes. Having said that, I have a visceral reaction to posts with a long list of blue tags. I hate it. I'm learning to live with it, but I hate it.
Having said that…
Something people complain about it is the follow-for-follow expectation some people have, and I bought into that. I mean, there's no obligation, and most of the follows you'd get this way are meaningless.
And yet,…
The other thing we complain about is how hard it is for fiction writers on Substack. The very first step, it seems to me, is that fiction writers should be following fiction writers.
If something isn't for you, but all means, unfollow, but to that end, I've stated following people off those long lists I hate.
Here's one, because doing this from the app is proving really hard.
If I haven't followed you yet, I'm working on it.
Names below the image.
As you probably noticed when you composed this, creating those tag lists is far more annoying than seeing them in Notes! I understand why they're good, but it takes me something like 30-45 minutes every Monday to do the Macabre Monday one on my Note announcing the relevant post. We should be able to just copy the list, but Substack doesn't properly preserve the code, so instead of getting the tag (which alerts those tagged, one gets an even longer list of profile links instead. Why? (I've tried pasting Substack tag lists elsewhere, and the code seems to be properly reproduced. Only on Substack is Substack's own code not reproduced properly.)
Oh, and then there are the handful of people whose Substack isn't recorded properly in a database somewhere, so attempts to include them don't work. Endless fun!
That's a long-winded way of saying thank you for doing this. It's a lot harder than it should be.
By the way, I don't think the purpose is just to get follows. It's also to guide people to related content they might enjoy (which is why all the thematic days do them). I sometimes do find and read things that might escape my attention otherwise. Now, if only we had hashtags...
Right now I'm trying to figure out how to slow the train. I like Sci-Friday but Macabre Monday isn't really my thing. Now we've got Swords Saturday or something. I wish there was a legit hashtag so I can follow things but my being tagged is not slowing down and I don't know how to stop it! 🤣