HENCE THE SELLOTAPE, or What a Nine-Year-Old Kiwi Taught Me About Divorce the Other Day
Hello my loves.
You may remember the week back in August when I told you I’d written a new piece that I was incredible proud of. It’s finally time to publish it.
Everybody I know is in the dumps right now, emotionally; exhausted, worried, on edge.
This is the moment. I think, for a piece like this.
With any luck, it gives you a little bit of hope.
Please go read it, and please, please share it from the Substack itself.
Here is the link to the piece itself:
…..
If you wanna really help me out, share this on socials…
You can just cut and paste the Substack link, but you can also just go to where I’ve shared it on Facebook, Twitter, and Insta, and share direct from there.
INSTAGRAM (it’s on my threads account, too)
Thank you.
.…..
For y’all patrons…a few notes.
I sent a much longer draft of this piece to the $10 patrons a few days ago. (I am pleased to report that it got exactly 69 comments). They helped me edit it and shorten it. I was struggling with some decisions about leaving in a long scene change / second half of the piece – they convinced me to cut it. To those folks, including MY DAD: THANK YOU. I think, collectively, you were right. I hope you like the finished piece.
This community means so much to me. As a writer, as an artist…I just can’t even with the gratutude sometimes.
I made two video reading: one for the patreon (above, and you’ll notice I left the edited-out ending in there, you won’t read that part on the finished substack piece, and one legit-true-to-form video just for the $5 substack subscirbers. If you’re really a glutton for punishment, you can become a substack subscriber…but I don’t expect you to.
This leads to some boring housekeeping.
If you are new to the patreon: I am a self-published writer. Your patronage pays for my ability to self-publish immediately, (or sometimes I wait a couple weeks, or months, to release a piece….but I like never having to wait years).
If you’re wondering why I don’t post these pieces directly to the patreon, or to my website, Substack has MUCH nicer and more readable/usable publishing tools and a sleeker commenting section, and I’m also able to reach a new audience within Substack world. Also, to be crass, it’s just prettier and linking to Substack is a much more legit way of self-publishing (in the eyes of many) than chucking out links to patreon to social media if you want a piece to gain a wider audience.
I like to think of the substack subscribers as the people who do not want the FIREHOSE of constant emails and content from me: they just want the writing itself every once in a while, thank you very much.
I do not expect to double dip here: so, like I said, you’re all welcome to subscribe to the substack for free, or as a paid $5 member, but know that I’ll be posting the same content over here.
I hope you’re all keeping your shit together.
I know I say it a lot, but I appreciate being able to self-publish – at will – so, so, so much.
Your patronage pays for my abilty to write (not to mention to team’s salries, and the cost of the copyeditor and all that jazz).
Hence the Sellotape.
Amanda
P.S. I still haven’t framed Aya’s drawing. It’s on the list of things to do. The list is very long.
