8 Questions for... S. E. Reid

Spotlight on Talebones

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

S.E. Reid

is a freelance writer, editor, and poet living on a patch of wooded wetland in the Pacific Northwest with her craftsman husband and her two big goofball dogs, Finn and Huck. She loves to hear and tell stories about nature, history, ghosts, and God, and when not writing she loves to cook nourishing food, read widely, and tend to her vegetable garden

1.     Why Substack?

Ever since I was a teenager I’ve been looking for a place online to express myself. I leave behind me a graveyard of dozens (not joking) of failed blogs, an ill-fated attempt at a Patreon, and presences on other sites like deviantArt, Tumblr, etc. In some ways, Substack was just a logical next step for someone who had spent decades wandering online and never really landing anywhere. 

When I joined Substack in early 2022, my sole intention was to share my nonfiction spiritual writings. At the time I had gained a modest following on Instagram with my poetry and nonfiction prose, but this was around the same time when IG’s algorithm was becoming increasingly indifferent to the combination of photos and text—which was the content I had built my platform with. They wanted more and more to be TikTok, and that simply wasn’t my jam. My growth had stagnated and I couldn’t see it improving anytime soon. 

So I joined Substack with The Wildroot Parables, and very quickly realized that this simple “newsletter platform” had WAY more potential than I had previously thought. And this was BEFORE Notes, and long before Talebones was a twinkle in my eye!

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

In some ways I’m still searching for my groove!

In truth, it took some time. When I joined Substack, I brought a lot of hard-won lessons with me (especially with the past Patreon thing). If I was going to ask people for their money for my writing, I wanted to make sure that I was giving them bang for their buck and approaching this thing with as much of a strategy as I could. 

Despite having a modest following on Instagram (a little over 2k), I remember being really shocked at how few folks followed me over here. I started out on Substack with maybe half a dozen readers, mostly family and my closer friendships I had made through Instagram. I set a very specific publishing schedule for myself, made sure that I was an active and encouraging presence at every Office Hours (again, this was pre-Notes), and simply committed to showing up with quality writing and community focus. From February 2022 until Notes launched in April 2023 I managed to grow my following organically to a little over 200 readers. And let me tell you, it felt like a huge accomplishment, considering all of my failed attempts previously! I’m still very proud of myself for that growth. 

Obviously, Notes changed everything. As an early and active adopter of the feature I saw a significant spike in readers when it got ramped up, and then in late May 2023 I launched my fiction newsletter, Talebones. The rest is kind of history, as they say!

3.     How has it changed you?

It can’t be overstated: Substack has changed my life, both as a writer and as a human. 

First of all, this wandering online troubadour has finally found a home, and is growing in my craft in ways I never have, before. While I’m very sensitive to the idea of putting all of my eggs in one basket and I’m always ready to pivot if I need to, I can’t imagine making my “home base” anywhere else, right now. The routine I’ve created has worked wonders for my brain, churning out consistent and quality work that I didn’t realize I was capable of, and feeling the improvement every time I try something new. It’s magic.  

Second, I never realized just how powerful it would be to have the tools at my fingertips to share my work with people who care. I often joke in my weekly update emails on Talebones that I have the proven best readership on Substack, but despite the hyperbole, I truly believe it. My audience is gracious, open-hearted, curious, and willing to read what I share at face value, and that makes me more and more incentivized to share my best with them. To keep trying new things, and to stay committed to this writing life that I chose. 

And finally, as a freelance writer and editor for my “dayjob”, a career path that has had MANY ups and downs, Substack has also given me a much-needed dose of confidence in my abilities as a writer, both professionally and not. I don’t know if I’ll ever truly “make a living” on this platform, but having this platform running alongside my freelance work has improved both paths exponentially, in quality and in consistency. 

4.     What mistakes have you made?

I’m grateful to say that I can’t think of any massive, world-ending mistakes I’ve made on this Substack journey. I hope and pray it stays that way! But most of them have been quiet and internal, patterns of thinking that can lead to bad places if you leave them unchecked. 

Like most of us, I’ve been guilty of playing the comparison game. Of worrying what other writers are doing, wondering why they seem so much further along than I am. Here on Substack that comparison can often have a monetary association, too, which makes it even harder. Despite my often Pollyanna-ish exterior I have a deeply pragmatic core, and I’m not in it for the money. There are loads of ways to make money much easier than writing! But as a freelancer who occasionally scrapes to pay the bills, it can be difficult sometimes to see others succeed in material ways; I’m not immune to that feeling. 

At my best, I let that feeling spur me forward instead of holding me back. Because the only person I am truly competing with is myself. I long to always learn more today than I did yesterday, to stay open to whatever’s coming down the path, to just keep my eyes on my own work. I really don’t think there’s any other way to grow.  

5.     To pay or not to pay?

I do have a paid option for both of my newsletters, yes. Over on The Wildroot Parables we are “reader-supported”, which means I don’t offer any perks and I never push it, it’s just there for those who want to support me. On Talebones, paid readers receive access to my Archive, along with making some special housekeeping decisions, getting some behind-the-scenes access to exclusive resources, and stuff like that. 

I approached Substack payment with a very clear strategy, thanks to my aforementioned ill-fated Patreon. It’s not a long or complicated story, but it still kills me: several years ago I started a Patreon, people supported me, I didn’t have a plan for what I would offer, and I quickly lost steam and felt that I was taking their money for nothing. It was very embarrassing, and I determined that that wouldn’t happen, here on Substack. 

What has helped me to keep the pressure on myself light is my paid rates. I use Substack’s discount feature to permanently alter the amount, so both of my newsletters cost half the minimum: $2.50 per month and $30 for a year. To me, this roughly equals the cost of one ebook a month or one hardcover book a year, which seems like a pretty fair deal for what I’m able to offer. I also include a PayPal-based tip jar on both sites.

Personally, while I feel so honored to make any money at all on this platform, I don’t think that the monetary reward of being on Substack comes purely from paid subscriptions. It comes from building trust and building community, which has ripple effects in a writer’s career. We lose sight of the real power of this platform when we focus solely on paid subscriptions. 

The numbers never tell the whole story, as I’m fond of saying. 

6.     What artistic and technical choices have you made?

This is an interesting question! It may sound a little strange, but when I first started Talebones, I simply thought it would be a cool place to put my fiction writing, and I didn’t have a cohesive plan. But when readers quickly started to gain interest in Ferris Island—the fictional island in Washington State where a lot of my stories take place—I remember my husband saying, “You’ve got a good thing, here. Don’t ignore that!”

So I chose to make Ferris Island the key focus of Talebones, even though that’s not necessarily what I planned to start with. But I’m SO glad I did, because I had so much I wanted to say, and so much more still to express through that weird little place! While I do occasionally write stories set in other locations, I know that people enjoy traveling to the island as much as I do, so that’s where I put my artistic focus for now. 

On a more technical note, one choice that I made early was to treat Talebones as a place where my polished, publishable work would go—like a portfolio—instead of work-in-progress needing feedback. I want my readers to see a post from Talebones in their inbox and know that they can just sit back with a cup of coffee and a snack, read, and enjoy. I know I’m not perfect (who is?), but feedback is not the main goal of my fiction platform. Accountability, consistency, and cultivating my own writing practice is the name of the game, and I’m pleased and honored to bring my gracious readers along with me!

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

It’s hard to explain, but the effect has been…mind-blowing? Completely unexpected? Having a readership to be accountable to, a schedule to keep, and a deep desire to stay sustainable has helped me to find a whole new rhythm and verve to my own writing that I’ve never had, before. 

This has been powerful, for me. I’ve been a private fiction writer for ages and ages, countless (and I mean countless) starts and stops to various projects, hard drives chock full of notes and prose and ideas…and all of a sudden, Substack uncorked the bottle and let me feel like I can actually put all of that stuff together in a cohesive way. It’s genuinely miraculous. 

Plus, I’ve really enjoyed figuring out how I “tick” as a writer, how much I need to plan ahead of time, how I gather inspiration, how I craft a story out of an idea. I’m learning about myself all the time, and that is more valuable to me than anything else. 

8.     In it for the long haul?

Absolutely. I’m proud to call Substack my “home” online. I love the neighborhood we’ve built here, and are still building, and I want to see us all grow and grow as much as we can. 

Fiction has the power to change lives. It does so every day. Storytelling is powerful stuff. The more we can all support one another, keep reading and engaging and evangelizing to our friends and family and the barista down the block, the better this place will be for all of us. 

Thank you for the opportunity to answer these questions, Eleanor. This has been a joy!