Transcript interview with Erica Drayton
Transcript interview with Erica Drayton
Prolific trailblazer, poet & author
You can read along and listen to the podcast here.
00:01 - Natalie (Host)
Welcome everybody to my latest audio podcast, and today I have Erica Drayton, the Queen of 100 World Stories and the purveyor of many writing activities to motivate our fiction community here in Substack. Her aim is to make us all more consistent storytellers and at the same time, take us away with quick flash fiction. She is the author of. Erica Drayton writes with a wonderful mix of encouragement, a wonderful mix of daily stories and, coming in 2024, there will be a serial novel. She also has two other Substacks on the go, one dedicated to the Wizard of Oz books and another focused on the Star Trek series. Erica, thank you so much for joining us today and we're really looking forward to hearing from you. So thank you, it's really it's great to have you on. I've been a long-term time reader and admirer of your flash fiction and I don't know how you do it on a regular basis. I really don't, but I was hoping we could start with the first question. Can you tell us a bit about the awesome life and times of Erica Drayton?
01:08 - Erica (Guest)
Well, I know you mentioned that I don't really talk about my personal life very much, which I don't and I think the reason is because I don't want to be a distraction from my work, so I don't mention you know that I have a wife. I usually don't. I will throw those in there, like this last email that I sent. I think I might have included a picture of the front of my house with my 12-foot skeleton, because it was like, okay, I'm going to include that. It doesn't really show or say much but it's, you know, seasonal, so I will include that in my email. But I usually just talk about anything and everything that I do pertaining to writing and I usually just like to stick with that, because then I don't have people feeling that I'm a therapist in a way, where they're like, oh, I have a similar thing, let me tell you and it's not that I don't care, it's just that that's not what I'm here for. I'm more here for you to not think about whatever is bothering you and to just get creeped out by my stories. But I will say that even though we are on November 4th, technically in my head I'm already in 2024. I've written off the rest of the year. The rest of the year is already set in stone on what I'm writing what I'm doing and what's scheduled to go out, and the only thing that's never scheduled is my 100-word stories, but I'm sure we'll go into that in detail later.
The Pickwick Papers & other Substacks
But right now, for me, I have already started my 2024 calendar, which is something new that I'm incorporating into what's happening because you mentioned two other Substacks. In fact, I have four, not two. So yeah, so those two have been running pretty consistently over the last year. I just revealed two more, which is I am going to do another read-along of Pickwick Papers, and it's like it's sitting here beside me. I don't know why I'm going to read this too, but I'm going to read this with people, and it's considered the first serial ever to be serialized, like ever.
*
Yes, so it's the Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens, so I want to read it, not realizing that it was a thousand pages, anyway, so I have a Substack for that to get started in March of next year, which is when the serial officially started every month. And then I also have the Poison Pen, which is an awards contest thing for people who write mystery and suspense, which is going to start in February of next year. So I have five in total my one main one, but then the other four on the side. So I needed a calendar basically to kind of organize the mess that I kind of walked into on my own. I did it myself, no one forced me, but yeah. So that's like where my head is at right now next year.
04:07 - Natalie (Host)
Wow, just just wow. I'm currently juggling one Substack, a business and two novels, and your workload is phenomenal, absolutely amazing, Erica. So yes, and I agree with you, it's going to be amazing to see the papers in real time read because it was being issued literally as a newspaper print, and I think that's one of the reasons why Charles Dickens was able to do such a big book and it did reach so many.
04:32 - Erica (Guest)
And I honestly don't understand, because I just did my full copy-pasting of the story, so it's 300,000 words, and I don't understand how he was releasing these every month and according to him, he wrote them immediately after he released one he started writing the next. And each month we're talking between five to 12,000 words for and it was usually two and two to three chapter chunks. And I'm just like I can't do that, Like I can't say on March 31st, “here's 7,000 chapters to read in the next 31 days - see you later!” I need to cut that down even smaller.
*
So I'm trying to figure out how can I stick to what was true in real time but acknowledge the fact that in Dickens’ time people had time to sit and read, unfortunately, whereas in and there were fewer people to had the time to afford the newspaper to read it in the first place, right? So back then this was not really available to every single person, just because newspaper printing back then was not what it is today. So, keeping all of that in the back of my brain, I can't expect to send someone 810, 12,000 words and be like we'll talk about it in a month, Like for me, I need to chop it down.
06:00 - Erica (Guest)
So I'm going to try to adhere to how this was published and released over 19 months, which is what he did with this, but still make it so that we can discuss it with each other and not feel bogged down by the assignment of you've got 12,000 words to read in 30 days, but yeah, I am really excited to just read the history about this tome here.
06:24 - Natalie (Host)
Definitely, definitely. And yeah, besides that, Pickwick Papers and Dickens in general was one of my favourites. He pioneered it. So did Kipling and Mark Twain. There are a lot of early Victorian writers who did that side of things. This leads me nicely to the next question, which is how did your writing journey start? I mean, you're a prolific writer now, but you must have come from somewhere to Substack and gone; “right, I'm going to do this.” How did you start writing?
Erica’s writing journey
06:53 - Erica (Guest)
Yeah, so I actually started writing pre-high school. So my writing journey actually started with poetry. So I was actually a pretty prolific poet writer. And I like to say that my mom was both an illustrator and a writer and so she had two children. So my brother is the illustrator because he can draw very well and I got her writing skills being a writer. But, yeah, I started with poetry, which she also did as well, and then, strangely enough, in high school it went from poetry to script writing, if you could believe it. Television, like I wanted to have a TV show for some reason. I was watching like 902 and all in all of those prime-time shows. I could do that. I could write dialogue just as good, if not better.
<microphone fumble>
Can you still hear me? Because one of my earphones just fell out. Okay, so I did that for a while and then I realized, like I'm a high school student, I'm not going to get this on TV, let's be for real. So I stopped, went to college, and returned to poetry writing, because in college you go through emotions and I was away at school and it was just so much and I needed to get it out. I didn't enter the world of writing a novel until after college, which, strangely enough, was only about 20 years ago.
*
Then I only wrote my first novel. And then I wrote an entire universe around that novel and decided and it was 60 books Plus it’s shelved at the moment but I was going to release a six book series, of which I wrote five of the six with novellas, five novellas alongside of it, of which I wrote two of the five. Published them fully on Amazon. I then had a ‘come to Jesus’ moment of like? I'm not ready. This is too soon. I had a nervous breakdown in 2009 that rendered me useless to writing as a whole because I put so much on my shoulders. I say this now after I just told you everything I'm about to do in 2024, but we'll get to that and then I took it all down. I took everything off of Amazon. You cannot find the books that I published back in 2009.
09:22 - Natalie (Host)
I went looking for them!
09:28 - Erica (Guest)
I'll take it all away and I said I'm going to start over. And at the time that I said that Mailchimp, which is what I was using for my newsletter, was having their own crisis where they were upsetting a lot of the freeloaders, as they called us, and it was really pissing me off and I needed to take my list somewhere else. And that was when I - I honestly don't remember how, where or why happened upon an interview that Elle Griffin - I'm sure that everyone knows who Elle is, right? - She was doing an interview on something and she just threw out the word Substack and just kept on with what she was talking about. She wasn't there to talk about substack, she was there to talk about something else. And as she's doing her interview, I'm quickly on Google and what the hell is Substack? I got to look this up and I saw immediately that it was Patreon, Wordpress, you know, MailChimp. It was all of these things and one. And I was just like okay, so I don't have to compartmentalize myself, I can literally start over, bring it all to Substack and go.
About Erica’s 100-word stories
11:00 - Erica (Guest)
And that was two years ago that that happened. It was in the middle of COVID, so it helped. At the time I was writing fiction, not 100-word stories, but I was writing fiction about once a week At the time. But now I had a whole new audience and a whole new world to do it in and I found out about writing 100-word stories. And so I just May 1st of this year don't ask me why One day I just decided I'm going to write 100-word stories every day until I can't.
And now it's gotten to the point where I stupidly don't start writing until 10 pm at night and I'm now staring at the clock like, okay, I've got two hours to get this out, because if I don't then I break the cycle and I'm almost at 200. I can't Every day that I think about it. I'm like you know, I'm not going to do it today. Forget it, it's 11 o'clock. Screw it, I'm going to bed. No one's going to care if Erica misses a day, you know who's going to notice. But then I think everyone's going to notice. Substack's going to notice.
11:47 - Natalie (Host)
Not to put too much pressure on you, Erica, but it's one of the highlights in my inbox because it's so quick and with some of your stories, I'm sitting there going: ‘I want you to do spin-offs and write-offs on this.’ You inspire me.
11:58 - Erica (Guest)
Right, right, and I've noticed that with a lot of them, that people, and it helps me because the theme helps me. If I don't have a theme, I'm screwed Right. So I need something to. I need, and even if the theme means nothing to you, even if the fact that I'm using literary tarot cards to write the next 14 days, you could care less. That's how it gets me to the next story, because the theme is amazingly helpful to me.
*
So when, when people have said, like man, I wish you could expand on that, like that was so awesome, I wanted to know what happens next, I go back to those and I'm like you know what in 2024, I don't know what I'm going to do in March, what was that story that people were saying they wish they could continue? Could I stretch that for 30 days? Okay, sure, let's do it. So January I'm doing that, I'm taking a story from August and I'm devoting the whole 31 days is going to be telling you how we got to that point of that story that people were just like what is Nowhere Island? Where is it? How did it happen? Like, what is this? So I so so January is devoted to Nowhere Island I can tell you right now, I've got nothing.
13:08 - Natalie (Host)
But we all know it's going to be awesome when it happens. If you're listening to this right now and you haven't signed up to Erica's Substack yet, get there before the 1st of January, because it sounds like it's going to be one heck of a ride and you don't want to miss it. Yeah.
13:26 - Erica (Guest)
Because sometimes I want to. I want to be that person who's ready for it, who's like I'm going to have an outline. But I know one of the key ingredients to writing a hundred word stories just to just to give you an insight on how I do it is I literally do give myself 20 minutes. They take less than 20 minutes for me to write and I know some of them people are just like oh, that was amazing, how did you come up with that? And sometimes in my 15 minutes of glory I will pat myself on the back and my wife is looking over at me like you wrote another one that you think is good, didn't you?
14:01 - Natalie (Host)
My husband does it to me as well.
14:06 - Erica (Guest)
There was some. There were some days where I'm just like, oh, I really hated this one, but I needed to write something. So I hit send. But honestly I do. I sit for 15 minutes and I write it. The days when it takes more than 15 minutes, I know that that one is going to be crap and I'm just like I'm going to put it out there anyway. But the days, like like the last two, I was just like man, I cursed for the first time in one and I was like, oh, I don't know how people are going to take that Like. I usually don't, like I am very creepy. I am very like creepy-oriented. I don't do happy endings. But the one where I cursed at the end I did have to put the asterisk in there because I was like I can't put a curse in here and just like write the word out. It just felt. It felt horrible to me to do because I was like I don't usually, but it felt like the narrative.
Breaking the writing rules
And then, like last night, I was watching a TV show where I noticed that one of the characters, their persona, really was based on the way that they talk it, that they was speaking and the guy kept saying you know, like every end of it. He was like every end of his sentence. He said you know? And so I was like what would happen if I intentionally did a thing that writers fear to do, which is repeat a word? You never want to repeat a word in the same sentence, let alone every sentence after right. But this was from the point of view and the dialogue, the inner dialogue of a person, and I was like we all have that quirk in our speech. So I went with crazy and I was like I'm going to write crazy in here two, three, four, 10 times and have someone come at me and say, oh, you read, that was really horribly written because you wrote crazy two, three times in a sentence.
*
It was intentional and I hope that people got that. That. That's why it's called crazy. That's why, like this guy was like this is crazy man and I've got to tell you this crazy story. It was so crazy, everything was crazy. I was like I got to call it crazy. This is what it is. It's the inner monologue. Go with it 15 minutes. I gave myself a pet on the back. I said this one was gold, move on.
16:17 - Natalie (Host)
That's brilliant, and the thing is, it's like: you knew the rules. You've done so much writing and so much experience that you know when to break them, and that means the mark for great writers knowing when to put your own stamp on it. And these are your rules. This is your playground. We're just here as spectators and audience. You get to decide. And, above all, you first said you started as a poet.
*
Poets use assonance and alliteration and repetition all the time and that does come through in your work, your love of words and how you carefully create them.
16:47 - Erica (Guest)
And a lot of times I do try to, whenever I've only done and I should know my own work better than anyone else at this point, but I'm guessing I've done two, possibly three poetry stories that were a hundred words. I could be wrong and it's my own work and I should know. The reason why I don't do them is because they are really freaking hard and I am my own worst critic. We all are on our own work, and so there are many, many, many stories that I have pushed out there where, if you read it with a certain cadence, you will see that I was starting to write a poem like I was starting to write without realizing that I was going to be rhyming, and sometimes I'll hit the enter key to like take that sentence and move it and start turning it into a poem, and then I'm just like no, I'm going to be really upset, this is not going to work.
*
So many times I've done that and I've just scrapped it and said this can't be a poem right now because it's going to just lead me into the abyss. I can't do a hundred word poem like that, which is why I've only done it like two or three times so far, and every time I'm just like do I want to take a whole month and just do poem, a hundred-word poems? You didn't hear that from me, but it might be coming in 2024 when I'm going to really shoot myself in the foot and do a whole month where it's going to be a hundred-word poem.
18:14 - Natalie (Host)
You're putting yourself in the corner for the future. Now, Erica, no, I'm not going to push for that, but I think it'll be awesome because you do have such a musical beat in your poetry. It's difficult, yeah.
18:23 - Erica (Guest)
It's difficult to do, but my hundred-word stories. At this point I feel like, no matter what I do and no matter what I take on and put on myself, that will always remain. So if I rise and fall, if I fail to read the Pickwick Club because I can't do it, if I end up bombing on the cereal because no one likes it, no one reads it and I can't write anymore, there will always be, every day, a 100-word story for me. So I think that that is what's giving me the confidence to do more and to go beyond. The hundred words is the fact that I know that my fall-back is what made me the Queen of 100-word stories. So if that's my fall-back, you know, to failure on the other things, let's go, let's try it.
19:09 - Natalie (Host)
At the end of the day, if we don't try and we don't try to fail, then we'll never succeed. We never create anything, right? That's for any creator, any artist. That's an inherent contradiction. You've got to try something different and you don't know people are going to like it. But if you don't do it, not an artist. So on those wise, depressing words, can you tell us a bit more about your novel? I think it is it Magicianary we're talking about here.
Erica’s novel: Sleight of Hand (a Wondermere novel)
Yes, okay. So carry out to that, because I'm about to give your listeners and you the name that I've been holding back because I was thinking about it. I was like, okay, I have to reveal it because it starts in January. So I've been mulling over it ever since you asked about this interview and I don't know when this is going to go live to your listeners, because I don't think you said that to me.
*
But I am going to tell you because Magicianary is the name of the thing that they do in this world. So I had to come up with a word for it because I didn't want to say magic, because the second I say magic, people think Harry Potter, wands, spells, potions, that sort of thing. It's not what this is. There is no magic. There are no spells, potions, or incantations. There are no witches and wizards here yet, but what Magicianary is is the card tricks, the sawing of a woman in half illusion, where you think it's real but it isn't. So magicians in this world are king. They are the TikTok celebrities. Everyone wants to know them, be them. They are these magic acts that happen and they take place in this Colosseum, which is surrounded by a time period of about the 15th and 16th century, which is a time period that I love.
*
I love the past, so it's more of a historical fiction mystery series. So this first book is just supposed to be an introduction to the world. There is a specific character in there which is not my main character, but who will be the main character on all the solving of the mysteries going forward. And a mystery is being solved in Slight of Hand, which is the first book, but it really is just supposed to be laying the foundation. It's laying the foundation for the world where this all takes place, which is called Wandemere. So you're hearing it from me first. Wandemere is, so it will be a Wandemere novel. There will be many that take place, but that's where it's called. That's Wandemere Colosseum. There are different things that are going to be called Wandemere and it's this small area where the hub of the city, where everyone comes to see magical acts, to go to taverns and theaters and things, where you're either a small time magician and you're here in the outskirts of the Colosseum or you get invited to perform at the Colosseum, which is sort of like a gladiator theme situation, where you're in the center doing your magic tricks and everyone's watching.
*
Some of the key points about it that I always love to play with dynamics is gender. So all the acts are male. There are no females. The women are usually what you would think in a magicians act, whereas they're the helping hands. They're not wearing the cape and hat, they're not performing the tricks, they are part of it. So there's a school for Magicianary which women teach, but women don't attend it. So it's very, very hierarchical in that way.
*
I have lineages already. I've done family trees for all of the main families and everything, and you can see the line.
*
And one of the things that I'm exploring in this book is that there is a woman by the name of Jan who owns the first ever magic shop that was ever created in this world, and she's a woman, but no one knows, because the shop had been handed down from men to men to men for generations, and so when she was the only female in the lineage that was left, when she was born, no one said that she was a girl.
*
They listed her as a boy because they knew they were not going to have any more children and they didn't want the shop to be taken from her being a woman running it. So she dresses as a man. She changes her intonation. So no one knows that this woman who runs this magic shop which is the magic shop where all the famous magicians go they go to get all of their tools and implements and all these things is a woman who lives here, and it's pretty cool that I came up with that like that. She has to hide her identity. She will actually be gay. She will actually have a wife, of course.
*
To put on this facade, that she is a man, right, so it just works out that way. But it's just. The mystery is, and the whole point of this world, that why it exists and why it should matter to you or to any of the readers, is not so much that women can't be magicians, because one of the A storylines is that the main character wants to be a magician, she wants to be on the stage and she doesn't want to have to hide the fact that she is a woman in order to do so. She sees Jan and she sees that Jan is living this world. That is a lie and she can't come out of the shadows, and that's one of her friends and she wishes that she didn't have to live that way. And Jan sneakily gives her some of the things that she should never have to learn how to do her own magic tricks.
*
The mystery is when there's a knock on the door. You love. When there's a knock on the door and a mystery, right, it's like who's at the? There's a knock on her door, a man who clearly is literally about to die on her doorstep walks in, dies in her house and gives her something that now she's terrified of having a deck of cards. The whole point of this is you can do any magic that you want, but you cannot do magic with a deck of cards. It is outlawed. No one can print decks of cards. You cannot own one. If you have one, you will be beheaded.
*
Everyone knows that there's this one deck of cards that they have not been able to find, that they know someone has it. The king has been looking for it and it shows up on her doorstep and she's like oh, forget that, there's a dead man on my floor. I now am in possession of a thing that's even worse than the dead man on my floor here. So she goes to her neighbour, who happens to be a retired magician who accidentally revealed a secret, which is what you're not supposed to do when you're a magician.
*
They're like three rules. One of them is you don't reveal how you do a thing, and so he did. So he's been banished and outlawed. He decides to help her in what to do, and so she not only now wants to be a magician at the Coliseum, she wants to be a magician at the Coliseum doing card tricks the one thing that she's. So the whole book is about how this forces her hand to do the thing that she is not allowed to do on many levels One, because she's a woman, you know, and all these things. And it's really what I find when I create a main character unfortunately for my main character, the characters around her. I love more.
27:04 - Natalie (Host)
Well, the whole point is a good supporting cast. It's never just about one person. You can't do it that way, Right?
27:10 - Erica (Guest)
I love my main character, but Jan is so much more interesting as she owns the shop. I've got Mrs Pogroy, who is the caretaker of the Coliseum, so she is the hands that makes everything work at the Coliseum. She hires all the people and she makes sure that everyone has what they need. The Pogroy's have been running the Coliseum since it was built, so it is of high esteem and she, this girl, works there. So that's how she gets to see the magic guys and gets to learn how to do them herself. But Mrs Pogroy is brilliant. And then I've got Flossie, who's her best friend, who is going to be the one to solve the mystery, by the way, so I can also reveal that to you. It's not really a thing. You'll find that out.
27:51 - Natalie (Host)
Thank you, I'm just going to get in on this now and make notes here. You've got Flossie, you've got Jan and you've got the Pogroys. You know what's going to be happening.
28:01 - Erica (Guest)
So right, Flossie is going to be the one who I then move forward with. I love Charisma. She's got her storyline. I do have more ideas for her. You'll see where she ends up and what happens with her, and the fact that she wants to be a magician. Will she or won't she? I can't tell you that. But Flossie, who is her best friend, who is her in this story? Who is her? You know that person who every main character needs that B story. She's that person who's going to be like okay, I understand you want to be a magician and all that, but don't you want to find out how this man ended up dead on your doorstep? Like, isn't that important to you? Why did he end up at your door?
28:44 - Natalie (Host)
Another word you've got to say Is there a reason for that? You've got to start to get on here. On the one hand, you've got a main character trying to basically overturn all the social and legal cultures, norms of a culture, by performing card tricks as a self in a public place like the Coliseum, which is prestigious. On the other hand, you've got the actual detective going. Hang on a second. We've got a dead person here. Needs to pay attention to him.
29:05 - Erica (Guest)
So that's going to be fun to watch, right, because maybe there's more to tell about what. Who I'm calling just the traveller, for now he doesn't have a name, he's just the traveller. So there is all of that going on and I will tell you that of this story, it's it's going to be a hundred thousand words. I can tell you that it is going to take about 40 to 42 weeks of the year to get it all out. It's going to take a long time. There are going to be about 10 weeks of that where I'm going to be doing shorter fiction and this I have. I have stolen this from and and she's okay with it from Sally. I've taken it where she's doing the similar thing with with Ferris.
29:49 - Natalie (Host)
Oh, yes, yes, I do, and if anyone, is wondering, I should put that into the transcript, as well as a link so you can look at her sub-stack too. Yeah, okay.
29:59 - Erica (Guest)
Yeah, so she. But she's doing like seasonal things and then she'll do like short stories and flash fiction. So I'm taking a bit of that idea and then I am going to give you a bit more insight into the characters that I love. That, unfortunately, will the way I put it be picked up and dropped in the story. Where I'm going to pick them up, they're going to be really present and there for a reason, but then we're going to eventually leave them behind to continue the story. But that doesn't mean that there isn't more to say about this person that we met in these few chapters that were really important.
*
So I'm going to take a quote-unquote break from the serial to write those which will be shorter and less labor intensive. But, yeah, each chapter is going to be about two to 3000 words to get this all out there and get this story out there, because really I want to do this so fast, because a flossing mystery series is going to be awesome and I'm like I really want to start those because they're going to be less. They're going to be smaller. They're going to be like 50,000 words, half of what I'm doing now. This is a beast that I'm writing and I understand that it's a beast, so I want to get it out, just because it really does lay the foundation of the groundwork for this entire world. But in 2025, because I think in five-year chunks. So I've got my five-year plan here. So in 2025 is when I really want to start churning on the mystery series for this one character and just step away from the slog of a hundred thousand-word novel, because it's a lot.
2024 publishing schedule
That's absolutely fair. I don't think anyone disagrees with you. A hundred thousand words is a lot. It's a proper ultramarathon in terms of writing terms. Are you planning to publish them as books afterwards?
31:50 - Erica (Guest)
Yes, I am In fact, and I think I've been mentioning this, but you know, people, sometimes they see it, sometimes they don't. I will be publishing, starting in 2024, a lot. So one of the first things that I'm publishing are my hundred-word stories. So I'm doing it in two different paths. So there's going to be the path of my favourites.
*
So, if you just want the ones that I like the most and that really inspired me the most, there's going to be a book for that, where I'm going to do the story and then alongside it, on the other side, is going to be a small paragraph about what influenced me, why I loved it so much. That's sort of insight. So there's going to be that book. But then on the other side there's going to be the first 100, the second 100, the third 100. So I'm going to keep going Like eventually I will have like the eight 100 and it will just be a volume, right.
*
So it'll be volume one, volume two, volume three, and I'm just going to give you the 100 stories, so numbers one through 100, and then one to one, to 200, et cetera. So I'm going to have that kind of parallel where you decide if you want to just collect them all and have them on your shelf and I'm going to make them as a square, so they will be square books, similar to I don't know if you're familiar with Austin Klein Steel Like an Artist, so the way his books are, I'm going to try as best as I can to mimic that look and feel. Just so they feel it fits.
33:28 - Natalie (Host)
I mean it's going to sound really odd, but that also harkens back to the 19th century. For example, Beatrix Potter and a lot of the small chap books that you used to have. They used to be square and small, so little hands could read them and it also worked very well if you wanted to stick something into a pocket or into a bag, so the sort of things you could read on the trap or waiting for a bus.
33:49 - Erica (Guest)
Right, and then of course, I am going to do, I am going to print Sleight of Hand. That will definitely get its own, and all of these will be on Amazon. And if you are a paid subscriber paid subscribers only will get the hardback version of these Okay, if you want it in hardback, the only way to get it is going to be if you're a paid subscriber. Otherwise, what you'll be able to find on Amazon will be paperback. And also, because I guess I'm just an evil, horrible person, I'm not an ebook person and so these will not be available as an ebook.
34:31 - Natalie (Host)
I'm sorry to say and to be fair, if they want it on your Substack they do have the electronic option right there.
34:40 - Erica (Guest)
And just because I just don't read books in an ebook form, I might do the novel as an ebook, but the 100-way stories. I've tried and I failed. It just won't look right, unfortunately, and sometimes a book needs to look a certain way in order to really get that point across, and I'm working really hard to find a way to make it look as different and unique as possible, because it's 100 words on a square page and so that's just not going to translate as an ebook. So the only way to get it is going to be, again, like you said, you have to subscribe because, as you know, I do lock them after a month. So, again, so paid subscribers have access to the archive of all the stories that I've written and if you're subscribed, you obviously sort of have an archive because you're getting it free in your inbox every day. But for anyone who subscribes today, unfortunately, October is all locked up, so you can read October first, but to read the rest of the month you'd have to be a paid subscriber to do that.
On getting paid
So it was difficult for me to do, to start making a lot of my things paid no-transcript. It was sort of a “come to Jesus moment” for me on. You know how much work I really do put in and and Hoping and expecting that people will see that. I mean, I Actually got a paid subscriber just before we got on this call. Like I happened to look at my email and I was like, wait, why do I have five paid subscribers I and I only have five? So I don't say that like I'm trying to, like you know, gloat because I literally only have five paid subscribers right now, but it blew my mind. I was like I'm probably gonna be late to this call because I've got to now see or not, because it's numbers lying to me, but it wasn't.
*
I was like, oh, that's so great, like each one that I get is just like a pat on the back to me that I'm doing something right and I try to get I'm trying to in 2024, shift from being Almost 50-50 with my nonfiction and fiction to now I'm tipping the scales dramatically. Most, if not all, of what I'm gonna be doing now will be fiction and I'm only gonna be releasing two emails a month that are not action. That's it. So my weekly editorials I am scaling it back to once a month. So I'm gonna have my hot topics once a month, where I'm gonna tell you what I think, instead of every Wednesday, and then my update, my first edition, on the first of the month. That's it. Otherwise, any and everything else that you get from me is going to be fiction, fiction, fiction to be fair, is absolutely awesome.
37:26 - Natalie (Host)
So just to reiterate, if you've come a paid subsets subscriber to Erica Drayton writes, we get access to your full access archive of a hundred Word stories, will get access to your new novel and we get the option of buying a hardback yeah, copies of your book.
37:43 - Erica (Guest)
Well, actually not even buying it, I give it to you.
37:46 - Natalie (Host)
This is brilliant value by anyone's terms.
37:52 - Erica (Guest)
You know I'm letting you buy it. No, no, no, like that's something that I'm giving as a paid subscriber. You get my hardback of the book, so that's just my kind of gift to my paid subscribers. And you also get and unfortunately, I don't know where they are right here I would show it to you. I created these postcards when I'm going to hand write a 100-word story that will never be seen anywhere. It will be yours personally. If you want to share it on social media, you can, but it will be a story that I won't do during my 100-word stories. It won't literally won't be. It'll be brand new. Just for you, that person that I'm sending it to, and I because I have Five, I'm do. I have two that definitely want it. I've been trying to ping the other two to be like, if you want this, I can give this to you and I mail it to you, but I am handwriting a 100-word story to each subscriber.
38:49 - Natalie (Host)
Okay, so we should put that down. Because we know for damn sure that Erica Drayton is going to be big in the future, a big name, so you're gonna want that, you know, if you're auctioning a story to get your grandkids to university.
Who knows who knows right? All for future, right, but there you go. Everybody get signed up.
On artistic creation
This now leads me to the final question, because I appreciate your time. We've been talking for over 40 minutes now, which is brilliant, and that is. I wanted to ask you go back to the tension, since you've been doing writing for so long now. In one of your recent posts, one of the nonfiction ones you talked about the difference between artists and creators and how we need to strike the balance between the two, right? I mean, how has that cropped up for you? You know, you said you have the come to Jesus moment, for example, about going paid, which I thoroughly support and think you should do. How do you balance, strike a balance between the commercial and the artistic?
39:58 - Erica (Guest)
I think I've always felt like I've been an old soul in a way because a lot of my reaction to a lot of things lately has been I have very few - pardon my French - f's to give about what other people think right, and so at the end of the day, I'm going to write what I like and say what I want, and then, if you don't like it, there are many, many ways in which you can block what I'm saying, because there are many ways in which I block what you quote, unquote. The person I don't like is saying you know, there are many people on Substack, I will be honest, who I quickly unfollow and or block because I just don't have time to argue about why I don't want to see what you're saying. I'm just not going to see it and then that way I don't have to have the argument, right? So to just go back to like artists, for example, I just go back to like artists versus creators. In many ways I try to be An artistic creator right, I don't try to separate the two because I think a lot of times we separate the two.
*
If you're an artist, then You're toiling and tinkering away and it's your baby and it's your joy and it's your, your whole world. You release it. It doesn't get the accolades you think it deserves. And now you're trying to lick your wounds and you're angry about it. If you're a creator, you're looking at the algorithms before you create the art. You're seeing what's trending, what's popular, your marketing and targeting specifically. And then, if that doesn't work and you don't get the accolades you feel you deserve because you did all the research Beforehand, then you're looking your wounds and you're angry. Either way, they're both headed in the same direction. Right, they're both, at the end of the day, coming to the same similar anger of why didn't I get mine?
*
And so I'm trying to take my art that I love, which is my 100 word stories, the fact that I'm going to be writing mystery now my favourite genre all of those things as the artist, and I'm hoping to build the audience first, which I hope that now I have as the creator, in that I'm creating things for the community to participate in with me, so that I'm not doing this by myself. So that's why, you know, just yesterday, the first time I'm doing a 100-word story collaboration, where I'm not doing it just you and me, I'm doing it just me and everybody. So I want everyone To do it. So before, what I would do is I would say if you want to collaborate with me, shoot me an email, we'll do it behind the scenes, we'll do the thing and then I'll share it with everyone when we're done.
*
Now I'm like here are my 50 words, I'm showing it to everyone. Take my 50 words and add yours. I dare you. Do you have the guts, do you have the ability? Because everyone thinks that it's so hard and a lot of times people like oh, I want to, I would love to collaborate with you, but I don't think I can. So now I'm calling it, I'm calling everyone out, because now it's not a secret behind the scenes, via back and forth email situation. Now it's like here are my 50, show me your 50, see that you can do it, let's go.
*
And so I'm trying to do a lot more community things and hoping that in doing community things, it's a creator side situation, because I'm reading the algorithms, I'm doing the statistics, I'm seeing what works right, like I know that community things works, I know that community things bring us together. So there's my creator, my artist. They're going to come together and eventually I'm either going to be like everybody else, looking my wounds at the end and saying, oh, why didn't I get mine? Or I'm going to be okay and just keep riding that wave of. I get to write what I want. You get to express yourself over here, so that you're not looking at what I love and I'm passionate about and having something negative to say about that, because I've got you working on your 50 words over here.
44:10 - Natalie (Host)
In other words, it is where down the destination. We're going to enjoy the journey, which is how it should be. Yeah, right, yeah right. Definitely yeah.
44:19 - Erica (Guest)
Well, so that's how I reconcile the two is I marry them instead of instead of picking the side? I'm not going to say that I'm trying to do this as a creator or I'm trying to not care about the audience and just be the artist. I am doing both. I'm caring about the audience over here with my community stuff, I am caring and nurturing my passion as an artist and I am I'm hopefully bringing both of them together in a way that the community stuff is free and what I'm eventually doing it.
*
It might not seem like it, but if you look at, you know, at the fine line, I am drawing a line now between my artistic work, putting it behind the paywall, and my community work, making it free for everyone, which is which is what's happening. But very few people will notice, just because they're very balanced in how much I'm doing of each, just because I'm doing daily 100-word stories which are free. You know you don't notice that my serial is going behind a paywall because I've got all these community posts going out to you when I'm like, hey, community, let's come together, let's do this. But, by the way, I do have this over here and if you want more. You can get more. You just have to knock.
45:36 - Natalie (Host)
well, not, even that. Knock at the door, right, you want this to come through and everyone should do it at some point.
45:45 - Erica (Guest)
Well, you know, you should do it, everyone should do it.
45:51 - Natalie (Host)
Maybe, but you have to remember, Erika, that I'm still a baby Substacker here. Eventually, when I think I've given enough value, I will go paid. But so far I'm just learning. I'm enjoying the journey, like you, and I'm just very grateful that I've got people that come to the blog and read it. So, yeah, let's see how it goes in the future. Which leads me to my final question before we sign off today what is your top tip for anyone browsing your Substack? What's the one thing you want us to see or to know or to read when we hit?
Erica’s Top Tip for her Substack (and yours)
46:19 - Erica (Guest)
Well, I have my “You Are Here post”. So I always say like, and I just updated it like a couple days ago because I realized it was very outdated. So you know that's that's the post where I would direct anyone in terms of getting to know what in the heck am I doing and all of the things that I'm doing and when, because it's a lot of emails that I'm throwing at people fairly regularly. The fact that so many of my subscribers stay is great, because it's a lot of emails, I understand, but one of the things that I hope people will get out of it is: it can be done.
Like, I know that there's a lot of this. You know people saying less is more, or you know people saying you need to get it right before you put it out there and stuff like that. Like, I am a big proponent of working in public and just putting it out there and either it rises or it falls, but at least you can say you did it. You can't say you did it if you, if no one sees it. So you know, I am going to show it, I'm going to put it out there, I'm going to reveal everything you know, I'm going to let you see behind the curtain if you will, and hopefully it will encourage others to let us see behind their curtain as well.
*
Because I am a huge proponent of stealing like an artist. I tell people that all the time. Every time I start to give advice, I always caveat it with. This is how I steal like an artist, right, like if you like what a person is doing. There's no law that says you can't do it too. Take your ideas, take who you are, take what you want to do and just do it within the roadmap that they're doing it in. Either you're going to find something better, find a twist to it, you're going to take a different pathway. It'll spin you too, but at least you did something and you produced it and you put it out there. So if you like what I'm doing, I don't recommend doing a hundred word stories per day. You know that's crazy, but right. But if you want to do it every other day, I give it to you every Friday so you don't have to feel like you're doing it daily, but you can do it every Friday or you can do it, you know. Whatever it is that I'm doing that you think, I think I can do that, but I don't know, do it and see, you might surprise yourself. So I'm hoping that people see all of my mistakes and use them to bolster themselves, or sees all of my successes If I have any to you know for you to see that says, oh, I totally can do that. I always use someone that's just a couple of steps ahead of me and I say I can do that. If they can do that, I can do that, like then, and let me see if I can do that.
49:10
And right now I will tell you that my 100 word stories comes from Jimmy Doom, and everyone knows who Jimmy Doom is, who's doing his daily stories Now. He's writing stories that are not, like, blocked down to anything His or any length, but they're daily and he's at 1117. I believe stories that he's been writing for over a thousand days. I'm going to hit a thousand. I'm ready. I've got my scrivener ready to go. I've numbered them all out. I know how. I know when I'm going to get 1000, the exact date you know. So I'm ready with all my milestones. Right now I'm going to hit 250 on January 5th. Everybody be ready. January 5th, Erica hits 250. But you know you have to find that person that you don't have to tell it publicly. You don't have to. You know, name drop. Oh, I just named dropped. Now, Jimmy, that's okay.
50:02 - Natalie (Host)
Jimmy, he's going to get people coming from this interview!
50:04 - Erica (Guest)
He's going keep saying ‘Who’s this?’
50:06 - Natalie (Host)
Yeah, Right.
50:09 - Erica (Guest)
But sometimes you go you have to keep that person in the back of your mind and say if they can do it and it could be a positive or a negative, it could be like I am so pissed that that person did that, I can do it better and then you go out and you do it. So I'm hoping that people see mine and say I mean if this chick can do it and she's busy and she's running five sub stacks, I mean I'm just running one. Like you know what have you done lately? You're only, you're only doing one. I've got five juggles right now. I think you can. You can manage and handle whatever it is you, whatever your path tells you to take. So I'm hoping that that's what people get when they come to my sub stack and they're overwhelmed by the fact that I've got 500 posts already before the end of the year, like don't look at that number. Well, look at it and say I could do that.
*
You know, whichever works for you I can do that and, on that note, thank you so much for your time and your passion today and your courage. I'm putting it out there, showing up daily doing what you do. Thank you.
I had no idea that Charles Dickens released Pipwick Papers once a month as a serial; or that it was such a large piece of work. Great interview and Nacy's right: whether the pieces that I make 'rise or fall', at least I can say that I 'did it'.