8 Questions for... Toby Litt

A Writer's Diary

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

Toby Litt

is a writer and environmental activist. His novels include  Corpsing,  Ghost Story,  Patience and  A Writer’s Diary. His run on the comic Dead Boy Detectives is the basis for the 8-part Netflix series. Toby is Head of Creative Writing at the University of Southampton. Here on Substack he writes, A Writer’s Diary.

1. Why Substack?

A week ago I’d have given you a different answer to this. But I was just asked to look over an interview I gave in 2009 to Alasdair Kay at Sleepy Orange. In that, I said (forgive self-quoting), ‘I wanted to try to do something I hadn’t done before – which is a story with a live chronology. If people followed it during the week it went live, they would have had blog entries and tweets going up as if in real time. That was exciting. I rarely get a sense of being-read-right-now’.

I was talking about some online writing I’d done for a project called We Tell Stories that also involved Naomi Alderman, Mohsin Hamid and other Penguin writers. It ended up winning best experimental writing and Best in Show at the SWSX Web awards.

To be honest, I’d mostly forgotten this. When people asked why Substack, I said that when I first heard about it (autumn 2021), I realised I’d written a book that would fit here. That was the first year of A Writer’s Diary – which I was able to put out day by day, sometimes hour by hour, and then publish (with the very generous Galley Beggar Press) on 1 January of the following year.

I’ve kept going with the diary every day since then, but it has changed form and purpose every year.

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

Because the first couple of years I did on Substack, I’d written the entries in advance, it wasn’t really until last year, when I decided I’d try to write everything as close to pressing send as possible, that there was any need to find a groove.

2024 meant a deadline a day. I’ve chosen 11:11 as the time my entries go out. I don’t know why. Perhaps because it’s a very slim time. Also, it gives readers more of the day to catch up.

What I learned was that there were days when I really felt exhausted, and that I didn’t know what to say, but – as with the first year – it was partly the smallness of the subjects that made them interesting to readers. Because they were so small, they’d likely been ignored.

Throughout the year, I tried to share useful writing advice. And I made an attempt to grow the readership as much as possible. In the end, that was successful. I just about doubled the number of subscribers.

This year is something else again.

3. How has it changed you?

It’s made me feel freer in writing very directly, in what I hope is an open voice. I have a very intimate relationship to an audience of friendly and devoted readers. Some join, some flee, but I have a group who are generally curious about what I do next. That is a great thing, when publishing feels so fragile.

There’s a kind of writing – of sentence, of sentiment – that we used to do in letters. It’s always a first draft. It’s always saying it’s not the final word, even when it’s offering a brutal definition. Now that we don’t write letters, it’s Substacking that’s allowing that.

I think it’s where I’ve done some of my best writing. Because it’s less claustrophobic than novel-prose.

4. What mistakes have you made?

I’ve assumed – even though I can see the reading stats – that people weren’t really paying attention. That there weren’t consequences to what I wrote. That no-one was going to get upset. However, if you mention someone anywhere online, they’re going to hear about it. Someone will let them know, or they’ll just egosurf their way to you.

Last year, I wrote an entry about regretting a review I once did of William Gibson’s novel Pattern Recognition. It wasn’t really addressed to him, although the final line was ‘Please accept my apologies, Mr Gibson’. However, within a couple of hours, a mutual friend had passed on the link to him. They said, ‘WG replied very swiftly with thanks and surprise and a positive vibe all round.’

If I’ve made mistakes, it’s been writing things that certain readers – even if it’s not about them – take personally.

5. To pay or not to pay?

I always feel regretful when I put in a paywall. But then I also feel regretful that my paid subscribers don’t get enough exclusivity. This year, I am sharing the most personal entries with those who are financially supporting me. For example, there is a love letter I wrote, around Valentine’s Day, that is only going to them.

I am paying for the Substacks where I want to support the writer, such as

Camilla Grudova

’s, or ones where I would like to use what’s written in my teaching, like

Jon Ronson

’s.

6. What artistic and technical choices have you made?

To try to keep it clean and readable.

Last year, I started to use more images for social media sharing. However, I’ve heard stories of writers being contacted by photographic agencies demanding payment. And I didn’t want to use AI generated images. So this year I’ve reverted to using my initials, most of the time.

Occasionally, choosing an image seemed to take as long as writing the entry. I’m not sure what difference any of them made.

I’ve only recently started using Restacks. All last year, I shared images and quotes on Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, Facebook and Tumblr. But this is a quieter year, so I’m not really doing that. There’s been a small drop-off in reads, but not much.

The majority of people come to my Substack via the emails or the app. And it’s shares and recommendations that bring new readers in.

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

I’ve become more direct in non-fiction, and less direct in fiction.

8. In it for the long haul?

For the forseeable. I have published 1181 posts since I began. Roughly one per day. I will definitely keep going – if I’m around – until 1 January 2026. It’s possible I will keep on with how this year’s diary has been going.

That’s been sharing my real diary from 1990, the year I left home and became a writer (wrote my first novel) and moved to Prague and fell in love twice. It’s the year I most envy my earlier self for living through, and I think people are enjoying seeing young-Toby going through the day-to-day struggles of trying to get better at writing.

That’s what many of them are doing, and right now Substack seems about the most hospitable place to do it.

Thanks for your questions.

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