Sectional Healing 12/15: Let's Make It Official
This newsletter wants to get a scholarship at King's College.
WRITE SECTION
New logo.1 ALMOST new year. Birthday next week. If you are the observational type, you may be noticing some evolutions. Some stylistic UPGRADES, if you will, and that is intentional, so good job by you.
2021 has been a weird year (this is my official trademarked hot take). Obviously, the Tony PandemiDanza of a global situation languished and is our forever now and we’re all just getting through it best we can.
Personally, the PMG went from having a live show tour2 to being fired from a live show tour to now putting on our own live show tour and I went from a resident of the great state of Alabama to returning to the mustard flingers, golf ball throwers and Rocky Top-corrupted ancestral lands of the Volunteer state.
IT’S ALL BEEN MADNESS and the collateral damage of all this tumult has been my writing situation.
For most of the year, I didn’t have a ton of time to give to it which made me feel crazy. I’ve felt like Hannibal Lecter being confined, repressed, and unable to act upon my natural compulsions which are writing and not cannibalism in case this metaphor didn’t stick the landing.
HOWEVER.
It’s been 6 months since we moved and we’re finally starting to find some stability and I can recognize a routine. This, with the help of all 17 of my trusty whiteboards means that I’ve landed on a definitive vision of what I want my writing to look like and it’s here on Substack with you LOVELY people.
ACCORDINGLY, beginning today, I’m opening up a paid component of this substack for people who want to read and support my non-fiction / fiction writing early.
Wait. “Paid component of this substack?” What does that mean?
I’m creating a section of this newsletter where I’m going to be writing chapters of my non-fiction and fiction books that you can access if you become a supporter.
If I want to do that, how do I set that up?
Just click this button RIGHT HERE.
Click and it will ask you to choose the free option / yearly / monthly / founding member. Choose accordingly, enter your payment info and BOOM.
Didn’t you do this before?
Good memory! I did. That was last summer and it was an experiment about creating a space for me to write my fictional novel with input and subsidizing from readers.
Why did you stop doing that?
I ended it after 6 months and refunded cash monies because, as it turns out, writing fiction for people in media res changes the nature of what the story needs to be and I worried that I wasn’t creating the best value for supporters as I learned about writing fiction.
Ok, so what changed?
Two things: 1) at that point, I wasn’t sure what the next step was for my non-fiction, but now I do. (It’s here.)
2) instead of writing in real time, I’ve built up a RESERVOIR of content that is banked so I’m not having to panic every single week to figure out how to do a fiction.
So how exactly are you going to write books here?
Instead of waiting 368 months for the next book and having to listen to me allude to it on episodes of The Popcast, lament about it here, market it endlessly, ask you to do stuff for it and then FINALLY you get the book, we’re going to flip that around.
One of the stubborn realities of the publishing industry is that they refuse to bundle the ebook, audiobook and physical book and instead make you pay separately for them all. It’s like how the airline industry makes you pay for your seat, your luggage, and WIFI on the plane. INSANITY.
And for someone like me, this is a huge problem because most of the people who are interested in what I write have been trained3 to listen to me over reading me so they are faced with a reduced landscape of options when it seems like the most reasonable course is to offer people a bundling of the ebook AND audiobook. Long story short, I can do that here; I can’t out there.
SO instead of deprioritizing the reader, I wanted to PRIORITIZE the reading / listening experience by retaining more control.
And speaking of control, I had an epiphany about the publishing industry during my brief visitation into the apparatus and I’m going to bold it here so that you know it is MAXIMUM IMPORTANCE:
The publishing process asks authors to generalize their content to reach as wide an audience as possible (makes sense!).
HOWEVER, most publisher marketing efforts are unimaginative, antiquated, and result in the book being exposed to an almost negligible amount of new readers WHICH THEN puts the onus on the author to over-convert their existing audience/platform into buying a book that is a diluted version of what the content they are accustomed to.
Accordingly, for the next book, we’re going to cut out the middle-person and I’m going to write them as monthly chapters here before bundling them into audio/digital books which I will then sell. Supporters will be able to see these in advance and if they would like to purchase them bundled together, they will be able to do so at a significant discount.
That was a super, very unnecessarily long answer to a simple question.
That’s my entire brand, so thank you.
So what is the book idea?
The first one is called Secretly Sacred and it’s going to be about finding elements of the divine within the secular. Originally, this was going to be the book I wrote after The Wondering Years, but the turn around was too fast and I hadn’t quite broken out the idea to my satisfaction.
What about after that? Anymore books planned?
LOL so many books honestly. I have the largest list of terrible ideas that anyone could imagine.
One of them is a fiction book about a guy who is dieting and waiting for his weekly cheat day, but the apocalypse happens and his plans for a delicious meal are THWARTED leading to him surviving a newly dystopic landscape in hopes that one day he will get that elusive cheat day. At a certain point, he ends up in Dollywood with Dolly Parton. DOESN’T THAT SOUND TERRIBLE?
But all that said, as of now, the plan is to write three total books in 2022 using only (hopefully) my good ideas.
Tentatively, the second book is about Ashley and I and our experiences and relationship lessons learned from remodeling and renovating three houses over the course of three years as we moved away from and then back home.
The third one is Villains Who Had A Point and it will be all about pop cultural and historical “villains” who may have had a point with why they did what they did.
I bet you are going to write an entire chapter on how Gaston was misunderstood?
“GOING TO WRITE” LOLLLLL? Dear reader, that chapter has been written already for years. It’s basically encased in amber and preserved next to the other prehistoric entities in my heart.
Wait back up. You are writing three books in one year? Couldn’t one argue that you haven’t even written one good book over multiple years, much less three at the same time?
First of all…
Secondly, yes you could DEFINITELY argue that exact point. However, the plan is for these books to be leaner and meaner. These won’t be 600 page tomes. I personally prefer quicker and more nimble books so while they will be smaller than the average bear, they will be packed with more content punch AND, most importantly, they will contain the optionality for me to add chapters in real time or after the fact. If we’re going to do the digital thing, why not embrace the fluidity of it all?
Okay so let’s get into the nitty gritty. Will supporters get anything else or is it just book stuff?
Supporters will get everything I’m writing and doing. They will get the weekly Sectional Healing Digests, essays, recaps, reviews, and book-related content exclusively.
ADDITIONALLY, they will get Over Under Achiever gambling thread discussions AND they will receive our monthly Bettor Together episode where Jason, Andre and myself answer questions about sports, gambling or other life mysteries.
What if I don’t want to support you? Do I still get anything for free?
Absolutely. Part of why I wanted to do it like this was to keep the free things free, which is why you will still get regular Sectional Healing emails just like you have been.
Will you be podcasting here at all?
For now, the podcasting feed will be used for:
An audio companion to the writing and also to any seasonal podcasting projects that come up. For example, I’m dying to talk about Yellowstone and how much they’ve made horses spin around this season. I have BREATHTAKING takes on that which would go here.
As a Q&A roundtable episode for Founding Members.
The monthly Bettor Together Over Under Achievers episode
Any seasonal podcasting projects that come up.
Last question: can I gift a subscription to Sectional Healing to a friend or loved one?
OF COURSE YOU CAN. It’s always a good time to give the gift of Sectional Healing to a loved one. And again, that’s “Sectional”, not “Sexual.” Very different gift. Very different experience.
Any questions, shoot me an email. If you realllllllllllly want to support the newsletter to get access to the book stuff (or anything else) but you just can’t make the $$$ work, lemme know and we’ll figure something out.
PICTURE SECTION
READS
Is a New Kind of Religion Forming on the Internet? I’ve never been worried about QAnon becoming an actual religion or other weird things like that, but this read really delineated what is fueling the muddled religious waters of late.
Why Are We Still So Obsessed with Princess Diana? I love finding reads that answer questions I knew I had but never thought to scrutinize.
What You Do With Your Shopping Cart When You're Done With It Says A Lot About You. I will save you the click: IF YOU DO NOT RETURN YOUR CART, YOU ARE A TRASHCAN PERSON. Unless you are a pregnant woman or a single mom dealing with multiple uncooperative childrens.
Why Are We So Awful To Our Spouses? Tough but good read on how we deprioritize our spouses in favor of being cool and polite to, say, the Jimmy Johns Delivery Driver.
The Great (Fake) Child-Sex-Trafficking Epidemic. A great read that connects the dots about how the early 2010 child sex-trafficking anxieties evolved into the QAnon / save the children / Pizza-gate delusions
GOOD DOG SECTION
This is Crimson. She looks like the stern friend we all need in our lives that will tell you not to get bangs at a pivotal moment in your life and that as much as you think you can replace a light fixture yourself and save money, how much more expensive is being dead from electrocution?
GOOD TWEETS
GOOD WATCH
MUSIC SECTION
Big ups to my guy Tyler Yocum. He designed the OUA logo, this logo and he’s done a lot of our PMG work too. Hit him up if you need some work done.
We were going to transport from city to city on a bus and everything and I was SO excited. Parents of kids get unreasonably excited when there are arrangements for them to be driven to places AND not have to pay attention while being driven. AND THIS WAS TAKEN FROM ME.
almost wrote “exposed to me” but that cast me as akin to anthrax or something which is NOT the vibe I’m going for.
The villain book is everything I never knew I wanted.
You’re playing hard and with my emotions Knox!! I’m still invested in the mega church pastor book!! But……I paid and got the subscription because I will support anything you write! The non-fiction about you and Ashley sounds great!!!