8 Questions for... Clancy Steadwell

Spotlight on Porn Name Pseudonym

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

Hello. My name is Clancy Steadwell, and this name is a pseudonym chosen via the ‘porn name’ method of taking one’s pet’s name and the name of the street they grew up on. My blog here on Substack is called ‘Porn Name Pseudonym’ and on it I write fiction, mostly of the literary variety, typically bildungsromans or modern love stories that alternate in levity and gravity.  

If your disdain for anonymity leaves you wanting to know more, please read some of my stories and take from them what you will about my station in life.  

I am the #1 anonymous, porn-name-based fiction writer on Substack, which I presume is why Eleanor has asked me to answer these eight questions.  

1.     Why Substack? 

In the months (or perhaps even years) leading up to my discovery of Substack, I had the frequent thought: "What if there was a website that was like an easy-setup blog that also had an email dimension to it, and a sort of social media aspect that allowed one to build a network of likeminded readers and writers? Gee, that'd be a perfect place to implement my idea of a pseudonymous author!” 

Now, perhaps because I am devoid of social media or perhaps because I am simply aloof, somehow I had not yet heard of Substack until about a year and a few months ago. Apparently this thing has been around since, what, 2016? 

I wish I had found it then. I would have had plenty to post.  

I have been writing fiction ever since I can remember. I completed my first ‘novel’ when I was 12. I’ve shared my work with family and friends and various incarnations of internet blogging apparatuses without much recognition or ‘success’ in the conventional sense of the word.   

I long ago resigned myself to making a living through other endeavours and to forever savour my writing as something all my own. 

Nowadays, the Clancy Steadwell behind the screen is too busy watching pointless sporting events, toiling away in their chosen contributions to the capitalist hegemony, enjoying films starring Diane Lane, and sampling various sugary breakfast cereals as desserts to devote the time and energy to submitting to traditional publications. 

Substack offers an easy alternative method of sharing my work to as many people as possible. It’s as simple as that for me. 

Most of all, I never found the community of likeminded people it takes to realize oneself in any artistic field. 

Substack, especially Notes, consists of the rare sort of people willing to give unvetted, unfiltered fiction delivered straight to their inbox a fighting chance.  

So here I am. 

2.     How long did it take you to find your groove? 

It definitely took a while, and I think it's actually something Substack needs to address, algorithm-wise.  

I started from zero. Zilch. Nada. No followers from anywhere. And if that’s the case for you on Substack, you are going to struggle for that groove, at first. They need to do something to artificially boost your first few posts, or else it can be really discouraging to post into the void for months. Right now their focus is mostly on ‘how to port your existing subscribers into Substack!’ or ‘translate your Instagram followers into subscribers!’

And without subscribers, it's very difficult to know what is working and what is not. 

Notes was the solution for me, as it has been for many. It has been everything for Clancy Steadwell. 

As aforementioned, I am someone who obviously deeply values privacy and thus has no social media to speak of, so when Notes was released, I was very intimidated. I saw the opportunity to build a readership but had no idea how to use it.  

I sat back for a while, didn’t post anything for months. I observed. I read. I was a bit disappointed that it didn’t turn into the next Twitter, but then found something better – a community of readers and writers. These were my people; I only needed to remind myself that I was one of them. It was, honestly, quite scary for me (and still is). It took months of therapy and medication (unrelated to Notes, mostly!) to achieve a headspace and level of mental health necessary to enter the fray.  

Some may be familiar with my tongue-in-cheek ‘Posting A Note Every Day Until I Reach 1,000,000 Subscribers’ campaign on Notes. As far as I know, I was one of the first people to do such a thing on Notes. I am kind of embarrassed by this now, and I think upon writing this, today might be one of the first days I have missed posting it in something like 200 days?  

But that campaign was crucial in keeping me engaged with the platform, checking in every day, interacting every day, learning the landscape, and building a presence.  

Sometimes it’s just about being there.  

If the ‘groove’ is finding any subscribers at all, it took about 3 months of posting into the void. If the ‘groove’ is seeing high (60%, or so) levels of engagement on each post and daily new subscribers, I would say that took about 6-9 months and is still ongoing.  

The groove is elusive, and the search for it never ends.   

3.     How has it changed you? 

Substack has allowed me to confront the duality of our everyday online nature in a way I never could before. Sure, I am behind a pseudonym, but the concept is the same for everyone: there is the me online, and there is the me in the real world. 

It has allowed me to compartmentalize my two lives in a way that feels healthy. I am engaged with the world, at arm’s length. 

But you know what? If Substack goes the way of the dodo, I will be fine, and so will you. It’s given me, at the very least, the courage and confidence to share my work in a public forum and know that at the very least some people will like it.  

Who knows, if Substack ever dies, maybe I’ll start making submissions to publishers.  

Maybe I will anyway. 

4.     What mistakes have you made? 

I don't think any of these are mistakes, per se, depending on how you define success, but they are perhaps faux pas of the Substack world. If you commit any of these egregious sins, fear not -- you are doing so for the sake of art and that is the greatest mistake you can make.  

These are all laws I have seemingly violated, and thus observed in doing so were perhaps mistakes:  

Keep stories at or around the 10-minute read mark. Fiction is not a good reason to be glued to the blue light for more than a handful of minutes. I think the trend toward poetry and micro-fiction is a reaction to writers recognizing this phenomenon. Unfortunately, some of my best work reads for longer than this, so this mistake will continue to be made. 

Stay in your lane, genre-wise. I think most of my followers expect real-world, lit-fic writing. Expectations are important, fulfilling them is crucial to maintaining your subscriber base. So my swerves into science-fiction come as a jolt. That’s too bad, because I’m going to keep doing it, because I love science-fiction.  

Some might say posting fiction on Substack, a 'newsletter' service is, in itself, a mistake. My most recent post, a non-fiction essay about fiction, rapidly became my most popular post, thereby proving the point I was making within.  

Then again, if these are mistakes, please forgive me for continuing to make them, and I hope you make them too. 

5.     To pay or not to pay? 

I hate saying this because I very much feel there is a "your work is worth it!" culture to proceedings these days, and if you believe that and want to introduce a pay model for your fiction, go for it.  

But for me, it is very hard to justify asking people to pay for my fiction. I am, after all, an anonymous being on the internet. It is very hard to quantify the value of fiction. That is why, as Eleanor pointed out in her 8 Questions, there are so many tiresome gatekeepers to the traditional publishing world. 

In fact, that's one of the salient points of my most recent popular non-fiction piece: how do we define the transactional benefits of fiction?  

Right now, defining the benefits of my own work escapes me, and as such, all is free. 

If I continue on the upward trajectory the PNP blog seems to be on, then maybe someday I’ll consider a paid option. I need to feel it from others first. I need to feel from my supporters that they are ravenous and that I am not providing enough, that I have so many subscribers and such demand for content that I can’t satiate it within the casual allotment of the time I devote to writing.  

It needs to turn into work for me to collect payments.  

I can see this happening for me someday, and if it does I will be glad, but I want to try and build a base of "fans" before I put up walls. In my opinion, it's a lot easier to let everyone in the garden and then trap them there rather than trying to coax them through the gate one by one.  

One model I like is what

Adam Nathan

is doing in their re-brand -- free fiction first, then the meta content behind the paywall.  

One thing I will say is that your work is always, always worth sharing, free or not.  

6.     What artistic and technical choices have you made 

I love talking craft, so I will have to limit myself here. A few things I have been doing more, per the Substack environ:  

Longer sentences, shorter paragraphs, equating to one or two sentence paragraphs. This means that your work has more negative space, i.e. more line breaks. If the sentences are well constructed and flow from one to the next, it lets someone who is giving the post a more cursory perusal further chances to pick up the thread of what is happening and be lured into a more complete read.  

I think this one is maybe performative and perhaps not a ‘good’ thing, so judge me if you will: Sentences with ‘hooks’ – sometimes you need to bludgeon the point home. If you’re trying to write some fiction under 10 minutes to read, you need something for the reader to latch onto in terms of theme and plot, preferably something that is eminently re-stackable such that others can as well.  

And finally, an obvious one: Strong openings. I think this applies to all fiction formats, but if someone is going to take a risk on your fiction on Substack, they should know the theme, tone, and direction of the story at once. This is why I Noted in response to

Nathan Slake

‘s question on endings that I always know the ending of my stories when I start writing, sometimes down to the sentences. This makes it easier to recognize what the first sentences should be, perhaps even allow some foreshadowing.  

Framed narratives are really good for Substack for this reason, I think.  

7.     What’s been the effect on your writing? 

I have definitely been writing more, or at least been more prolific since I started my Substack, which some might find dubious since the frequency of my posts is confined to about once a month. 

The truth is that I am a very slow writer. Not in terms of the literal process, once I start something, it comes out in one fell swoop, and I do very little re-writing (although quite a lot of editing and restructuring).  

Inspiration is key for me. I will not write something without fully baked, fully qualified inspiration, and that takes time.  

I write most of my stories in my head, for weeks at a time. There will be entire sentences composed in my head that I recite in walks, in bed before sleep, while I do the dishes. The ones that stick with me over such a time make it into the first draft. 

Substack and the desire to post on it in at least a somewhat regular fashion has forced me to garner more awareness of my inspirations than I would have previously. I take more walks, turn down the radio on drives, sit on the porch and listen to the birds. I more consciously take time to let inspiration run its course. 

That, for me, is a good thing. 

8.     In it for the long haul?  

Yep, get used to me. Until I have a million subscribers.  

In all seriousness, it will be a challenge for me to continue on Substack as I have; life gets in the way, but more often than not, it’s me who gets in the way, and I will have to make sure I monitor my mental health and not to overdo it or take things too personally.  

I recently received my first overt criticisms on some posts, and I was able to laugh them off – I guess I have finally made it! 

With the support of this great community, maybe I will keep making it.  

Thank you Clancy Steadwell for joining this conversation.