8 Questions for... Bridget Riley
Naptime Novelist
is an Idaho native currently living in Oklahoma with her husband and three small children. She publishes weekly short stories and serialized fiction at Naptime Novelist. Her newsletter’s flagship stories are the Judith Temple mysteries, which follow a brilliant but socially awkward psychic detective as she investigates crimes and paranormal phenomena in rural Appalachia. When not writing or wrangling children, Bridget can be found braving the Oklahoma wind for some outdoor time, sneaking potato chips, or re-reading Jane Austen and Dorothy L. Sayers with a cup of tea in hand.
1. Why Substack?
Before I joined Substack, I had been squirreling away stories for several years, sending them out to various literary journals and, other than a handful of lucky stories, getting rejection after rejection. A couple times, I received a personal comment alongside the rejection, and I think my husband was a bit confused as to why I was over the moon with excitement about what was still a rejection. With such a backlog of short stories and flash fiction wasting away in my Dropbox, I wanted to find a home for them, and, though I wasn’t fully aware of it, I hungered for community with other writers, with other people who understand the sometimes bizarre drive to keep creating even when it seems, by many standards, that there is little to no chance of a tangible reward.
I stumbled upon Substack essentially by accident. A few years ago, a podcast host whose work I enjoyed started a Substack, and while reading through their content, I gradually started poking around some other newsletters. I joined a Substack-based Jane Austen book club. While clicking through the book club discussions in a postpartum haze, I discovered a few people, moms like me, who published fiction on Substack, and I couldn’t get the thought out of my head. I spent a couple weeks designing and figuring out what I wanted from my newsletter, and then, week by week, started sharing my backlog of stories.
The growth was slow, but it was steady and organic. The collaborative events (the Suff, Macabre Monday, the other themed days and collections) on Notes helped me get more engaged with other fiction writers, and I truly believe that Notes has been instrumental in helping me develop my newsletter and share my fiction. It has also helped me to discover some of the amazing writers here, and finding such a wealth of stellar fiction has taught me more about writing as a craft.
2. How long did it take you to find your groove?
Down in the Holler, which became my first foray into long-form fiction here, had been percolating in my head for several years by the time I discovered the fiction corner of Substack, and I knew when I started my newsletter that I eventually wanted to serialize mysteries here. After those first few exploratory months, I felt ready, or as close to ready as I could be, to give it a try.
Reading the work of other people was invaluable for finding new and innovative ways to use the tools available on Substack. By the time I was ready to start publishing Down in the Holler, I had had many opportunities to gather wisdom from more experienced writers of serial fiction. I’d seen firsthand the importance of a clear and intuitive Table of Contents and buttons to help readers navigate between installments; without role models to follow, there would have been a lot more trial and error on my part in terms of the technical logistics.
In addition to getting my bearings with the technical side of publishing online, it took a while for me to become less focused on the metrics that Substack makes available. Just because I canknow, at any given moment, how many views my post has received doesn’t mean I need to know or that I should constantly check the numbers. So in terms of when I found my groove, I would say it was really when I started caring less about the numbers and having more peace, regardless of what the metrics showed.
3. How has it changed you?
Yes.
But really, my writing life does look completely different now than it did prior to October of 2023, when I first started my newsletter. Instead of scribbling away secretly and never showing my work to anyone except anonymous strangers who, for the most part, either never got back to me or let me know that my work wasn’t the right fit for their journal, I now get to share my work weekly with people who enjoy the characters as much as I do.
Particularly in terms of serialized fiction, the knowledge that people are excited to read what I’ve written and eager to know what’s going to happen after last week’s cliffhanger is the best motivation I could possibly have to make time to write, despite the fact that procrastination is one of my keenest skill sets. I’m a happier and more pleasant person when I’m writing, so my family is also grateful to Substack for keeping me in a regular writing practice!
4. What mistakes have you made?
I’m sure I’ve made many blunders along the way as I’ve gotten my feet under me on Substack, but the other writers I’ve encountered here have never held those mistakes against me or acted in a hostile or gatekeep-y way. The openness and kindness of Substack’s fiction community has helped me feel comfortable branching out and sharing my stories, which was something that terrified me for many years. Having wonderful role models and a fairly narrow focus for my newsletter has been so helpful in staying on a clear track. I also try, as much as possible, to avoid, mute, and block toxic or negative discourse on Notes, which, as lovely as Notes can be, is one of the dangers to be aware of with any social media. Thankfully, I think that most of my mistakes have been fairly small and due to remediable ignorance about the more technological or business-related side of writing online.
5. To pay or not to pay?
I now have the paid option available, and I’m slowly building up some perks for paid subscribers as a way to thank them for their support. For over a year, though, I kept all of my stories free and didn’t even have the paid option turned on. Personally, it took a while for me to feel confident enough to take that step of accepting money for my stories. This was not necessarily due to doubts about my writing, but more about my choice to let writing be more than a hobby. It was a hurdle of imposter syndrome that still flares up from time to time, but I’m learning to manage it.
6. What artistic and technical choices have you made?
I’ve chosen to keep my newsletter fairly focused in its scope. Naptime Novelist is a place for weekly fiction of varying lengths, from microfiction to long-form serialized fiction. I don’t write about fiction in my newsletter, though I do sometimes chime in on discussions about craft and genre on Notes. Keeping a narrow scope has helped me to stay focused on actually writing fiction and offering stories at regular, predictable intervals to respect the time and expectations of readers.
This might sound overly simplistic, but I also choose to write only the stories that I would want to read. More than just maintaining a consistent tone or not following ever-changing trends, all of my fiction represents something about my worldview, even if the characters are making choices that are starkly opposed to my own beliefs. This is why nuggets of hope and redemption crop up so frequently, even in my grimmest stories. I don’t like unearned, rose-tinted happy endings, but I choose to let there be hope in my stories because of my own belief of hope in the world.
7. What’s been the effect on your writing?
Because my stories, even the ones that also include a good dose of humor, tend to involve grim subject matter alongside a sometimes faint glow of hope, I think I tend to attract readers who appreciate that balance of light and darkness. Leaning into those ideas and striving to make each line of the story meaningful and beautiful, whether the beauty is flowery or stark, has been one of the joys of writing for me, particularly since joining Substack.
8. In it for the long haul?
As long as Substack is a healthy, welcoming place for fiction, I plan to be here! I’ve found that my sense of peace and purpose diminishes whenever I’m not writing, so I suspect I’ll always be scribbling stories. With the joy I’ve found in sharing my work and engaging with Substack’s fiction community, I can’t imagine being anywhere else!
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Bridget’s Judith Temple series are awesome! Highly recommend! Thanks for this little peek, Eleanor and Bridget!
i love reading about other peoples' substack journeys. I somewhat wistfully wish I had found this place a good 12 months before notes... but then maybe i would hate them rather than just finding them a worrying distraction.