8 Questions for... Dr. Kathleen Waller

Spotlight on The Matterhorn

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

Kathleen Waller writes The Matterhorn on Substack. She is a fiction writer, teacher, and independent researcher of cultural studies and comparative literature. Kathleen lives with her family in Basel, Switzerland where she delights in the cheese and mountains daily.

1.     Why Substack?

A couple of years ago, I found myself with the opportunity to devote more time to my writing and was looking for a place to call home for my work and a place to build an audience. I already had an author website and had dappled with blogs and online publications, but I wanted to build a connection over time with a group of people who were interested in my writing and subjects. (Bonus: I didn’t expect to also find a place where I could likewise engage with other writers and cultural thinkers in this way.)

My journalist brother suggested that Substack is where the serious writers were going. I didn’t just take his word for it, but after some digging of my own, it seemed like this was true. I liked the idea of having a continual audience rather than creating click-bait or sending my fiction out into the ether. However, I liked the move away from blogs. For me, Substack is something very different. It is a place where an artist or philosopher can create as well as interact.

Essentially, I was looking for an audience for my fiction, which I found to be a much more abstract idea than looking to publish and sell non-fiction. I’ve published two non-fiction books with Hachette. Even then, there was not a huge amount of support in terms of marketing, and I’m not able, or interested really, in traveling around with my books. At least they did that for me to some extent, but here I can make it more authentic and convenient. It was great to work with a team to support the publications, however, so it’s something I may also do in the future. I’ve been asked about a potential book by my publisher recently, but I decided to say no-for-now because of the projects I’ve got in the works here that are taking precedence. It’s also hard to say no to her because she’s such a lovely person! There are still a lot of good people in the Big Five.

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

I experimented first on Medium for about six months to think about what I wanted to do with Substack, with a plan to transition there at some point. (When I say first, this is after many years of writing and publishing but without any email list to import.) I saw Medium as a playground to try out online publishing that wasn’t blogging. It was useful but I was doing very different things there. I realized what I didn’t want to do. That is, write a lot of random unconnected stuff that may or may not get read depending on algorithms (and quality, of course!). Also, my most successful articles there were on hot topics, such as a reading of the Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard trial media narrative through the lens of the Oscar Wilde trial (transcript published as Irish Peacock & Scarlett Marquess by Wilde’s grandson). While this interested me, I didn’t want to write with this kind of time-sensitive pressure not allowing me to really create in the time and space that I desired. I started having more success also publishing in some of their bigger publications there and that’s how I knew for sure that I wanted to create my own, with my own message and scope.

Ultimately, I wanted to find an audience for fiction, but I started here with related articles because I wrote longer fiction and had not considered serialization at all. Instead, I thought I would find an audience to buy books. My initial work was focused on these intertextual, international experiments. Those also evolved over the first year into series and the addition of my podcast.

However, I was inspired by the fiction writers I found on Substack. Some were serializing, others published flash fiction, and many were bending any kind of categorization at all. I had a manuscript that I wanted to share but was not trad-publishable (‘too long’ ‘too political’ ‘too shocking’). So, I decided to just go for it. I started publishing fiction after a year and a bit – fourteen months actually, which, now that I reflect on it, was around the age of my son when I started to feel like myself again. Maybe it’s something like a year lets you go through all the seasons and holidays and ebbs and flows that a year takes you on, then you have some time to celebrate, freak out, process, and move forward with more self-control. Fourteen months is my gestation period, I guess. I think my platform will keep changing, and that’s why I like it. I can pivot and experiment. I feel like I’m in my groove now because I’m less afraid of those things and more interested in just putting things out that I feel proud of or even that I’m not sure of but would like feedback on. It feels so free.

3.     How has it changed you?

It has made writing into a community for me! That community has allowed me to take some of those risks. It’s supportive. It gives feedback, so you’re not just howling at the wind. It’s allowed me to consider the possible range of what it means to be a writer as I look ahead. So, in turn, it has given me courage and freedom. It’s allowed me to be more creative not just in what I write but in how I go about sharing that writing.

I also had a lot of support to move forward and with those changes along the way, especially from two writers on this platform whom I Zoom or text with regularly (hi!). My husband as well has done a lot of listening and supporting. Even with the great community here, it can feel isolating to work in this way and we all need encouragement where we can get it. I would advise that if you don’t have it, email someone you interact with here to see if they’d be open to having a chat. It helps so much.

4.     What mistakes have you made?

I think the biggest mistake would have been not to make the mistakes. I see my publication as a live experiment and if I were worried about mistakes, then most of this wouldn’t get published. But I do still get worried! I just push through that fear and try it out. Like everyone, I lose a lot of subscribers all the time. I try to just keep my ideas and goals central.

One mistake I made was waiting so long to publish fiction. But I’m there now. Occasionally, I spend more time on considering how to publish the other stuff. I think that’s because it feels easier. There’s a certain kind of structure or at least more clarity in that work. I must constantly remind myself of this. What I find difficult is saying no to the writing I’m interested in but don’t love as much as the fiction. It’s easy to say no to things you don’t like and aren’t a necessary responsibility. It’s harder to say no to things you enjoy greatly though not as much as something else. Those things can steal away the time and energy to devote to your true passion.

5.     To pay or not to pay?

I started experimenting with paid articles from the start and then once later, but I found it made me question things too much. It made me carry an uncomfortable business hat and I felt that paradoxically it wasn’t good for my business. Because first and foremost, I wanted to grow an audience.

Likewise, some of the articles I had behind paywall were on the independent research side of things. This is a tricky area for me. If you’re advancing knowledge, even if not peer reviewed, I like the idea that it is accessible to everyone. It can be expensive, for example, to get access to many academic journals unless one is part of an institution. I’m lucky that one of my alma maters gives us free access to JStor for life. What a gem! Most of my academic publishing was through Purdue’s Comparative Literature and Culture, partly because it is open source. I had a lot of talks about this model of journal with young scholars at the Societas Ethicas conference back in 2013 but I’m not sure where it’s gotten us. The problem is that organizations – universities, governments, individual donors – need to decide to pay. Will they? Humanities are often seen as superfluous and therefore considered last when it comes to money. How crazy is that when we think of the implications of AI, war, climate change…anything…without considering ethics, art, history, etc. at the table? I digress. But my point is, it’s a much bigger problem. We see the same kind of effect on Substack, I think. I don’t mean this in a cantankerous way. I love what I do for work – that is, write and teach. And I have enough to live a comfortable life. At the same time, a redistribution of funding wouldn’t hurt and give more people the opportunity both for themselves and the benefit of, well, the world.

Digression aside, I now use a patron model, where my fiction and articles are free. I like that some authors out there are asking people to pay for this work, because it is a joy, but it is also work and it is also worth paying for. However, I’ve decided to do this partly because I feel less pressure on myself. I feel freer to change things up, which I tend to do a lot. Instead, I give perks like a free e-book and soon some extra related podcasts to patrons. My financial focus is more on patrons contributing to the independent research that goes into articles and fiction. Then, audience members can buy my book or share my work with someone who might in the future. I think we have to be careful to separate value and money here. A lot of the most valuable works of fiction made very little money during the life of the author. Even if we are not after fame, there is value in fiction that affects the writer herself and even just one reader. To be really clichéd (and I like clichés when they work), it is the butterfly effect. If a thousand fiction writers add truth and/or beauty to the world and help us think, then we may have a thousand or a million or a billion people whose own lives improve and possibly improve the lives of others. I don’t mean this like self-help writing, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Sometimes also looking truth in the eye helps us really see the world we live in or feel less lonely. It might spark action, or it might allow us a moment of joy. However, to do it, Virginia Woolf would tell us that we need “money and a room of one’s own if one is to write fiction.” So, it has to come from somewhere.

6.     What artistic and technical choices have you made?

I’ve chosen to allow my fiction and independent research to coexist here. I like the possibility of creating different sections that readers can choose to receive or not. Structure helps me to be more creative because it gives me a sense of purpose and allows my readers to move forward with me. I’ve changed things during seasons, included a special summer series, and added a podcast. The podcast was at first a playground…there was a lot to figure out, even just technically there! Reflecting now, I can’t believe how much I have learned in that area. At one point, I was talking to production companies about a podcast side project, but I realized it wasn’t the focus I wanted. Instead, I brought my podcasting back to the fiction. On the show, I’m talking about the ways that I and other authors layer fiction. That is, how we include elements of place, history, culture, politics, critical theory, etc. in our work. It’s sort of my way of explaining how my fiction writing is simply an extension of the academic work I was doing. I had the chance to speak with students at Pratt Institute about that last year. I was so pleased also because the professor who invited me to deliver the talk had been a mentor at The University of Hong Kong and was at first quite shocked, and perhaps disappointed, that I wanted to leave academia after my PhD to focus on teaching and fiction writing. It’s just another reminder to stay true to who you are and what you want to do.

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

Structure and freedom. First, I’ve considered ways of structuring the writing I send out, which has developed new formats that come from established methods but are my own. This in turn has allowed me more freedom with my writing. It’s not just articles and books/novels, these days. I use multimedia, variations on voice with my audience (somewhere between academic and colloquial, at times), and new types of fiction. I haven’t published much of my fiction experiments in this vein yet. They are drafts on Scrivener or truly nascent in journals. Even something like playing with length – i.e. novellas that are ‘unpublishable’ – or using gaps, anachronisms (in terms of the structure of the text) and shifting voices have emerged from this space.

8.     In it for the long haul?

Yes! Although, I’ve had my doubts. It’s easy to get caught up in anticipating the reactions to your published fiction here rather than considering the process. Also, when I decided to go back to a job in a school next year, I worried that keeping up my Substack would be too much and perhaps conflict with my persona at work. I worried that the odd student might dive into everything on my publication as well. I’m not sure why that frightened me. I would want to encourage my students to publish their work in this way. It takes courage to do it, just as it takes courage to truly be oneself. The intrinsic reward, however, is great.

I also realized that I have always been writing and publishing, just in different formats, and that I always will, no matter what else is going on in my life. This gives me a place to share the work and also connect with people. So many people here have become friends, just through Notes and comments. Often, I don’t even know what they look like, but I like who they are, and I enjoy our correspondence in addition to the writing they do. I feel like there are people here who get me. As a fiction writer, that can be hard to find! I don’t mean it in an elitist way. But we do tend to retreat and ruminate or privilege our writing at the expense of other things to the perplexity of others. This 8 Questions project implicitly shows this kind of community as have others, such as Same Walk, Different Shoes from Ben Wakeman and places like The Library, or the sharing of others’ fiction projects by SE Reid and ME Rothwell. I’m not sure I would keep going on here if it weren’t for this kind of collaboration. Thank you for having me as a guest today to support this fact!

Thanks to Dr. Kathleen Waller for joining this conversation.