This morning, I’m making a lemon tart. It’s chilly and gray outside, the calendar says spring, but nothing has sprung. So I’m going to fill my kitchen (and my mouth) with a little citrus sunshine. Lemons, sugar, flour, cream, butter and eggs. And it’s going to cost me less than five dollars.

What else costs about $5? A fancy coffee. A few biscotti. A box of dog cookies. A fistful of pencils. A sack of used books.

How about a month’s worth of stories? If you’re a reader and you’re hungry for great tales of all sorts, we’ve got them. And more.

We invite you to join us at daCunha, a publication with so many creative bees in the bonnet, it almost defies definition. But I’ll try.

Begin the story * daCunha.global

daCunha (say da-COON-ya) is a gorgeous online publishing community filled with short stories and personal essays. And audio recordings. Oh, and a BOOK! A wonderful collection of editor-selected short stories — and another in the oven.

If you love stories and you’d love to add a dose of art to your daily diet, then you must visit us. And, for the price of a cup of coffee, you can subscribe. You will have access to all the wonders we unearth and you will be supporting artists. Supporting ART, perhaps the simplest and most valuable thing you can do in this topsy-turvy world. The artists may, in the end, save us all.

We offer a rotating selection of free stories, a taste of what’s inside. Here’s a wonderful example, by Stephen M. Tomic —

A Golden Light * Fiction * daCunha.global

Anything can happen at daCunha. In the months to come, Stephen’s story could be published in print, recorded by professional actors, or featured at a live event.

Join us! And now, to the lemon tart.

or, my life as the nether regions of a donkey

A few years ago, while helping to facilitate a writing workshop at my alma mater, I was asked to write and share one or two paragraphs welcoming the freshman MFA class. The idea, to impart a few nuggets of advice. Pearls of writing wisdom. Well, I’m not at all sure I accomplished that, though I am confident I did give them something to think about:

Congratulations. By virtue of your acceptance, you have shown great potential to some unrelenting observers and critics. Though, please realize, a masters of fine arts is not a mandatory benchmark for narrative breadth. Nor does popular writing, by nature, equal literary skill. And, literary skill alone, does not equal a lucrative pay stub. And lucrative pay stubs, no matter how high the figure, will at some point fail to feed your need to author your One Great Literary Treasure.

Put another way, this writing thing is complicated and messy. No two people will experience the heartaches, challenges, and splendid euphoria in exactly the same way. Thus, my only advice to a writer, ironically, is to not give a whole lot of weight to advice. Mine included. Because in this highly personal and individually specific endeavor, you will come to know what works for you. Through plain old trial and error. Trust that.

However, since I’ve been asked, the following are some ideas that have, over time, become true for me.

If Nothing Else, Read

By necessity, I spend a lot of time on the Internet. Frequently, too much time, since walking away from a session often leaves me feeling not dissimilar to a bloated sponge with ADHD. TV leaves me less impaired, yet never completely fulfilled. Except, perhaps, the last season of Six Feet Under. And that was nine years ago.

But then there’s reading. There is nothing in the world that fuels me like reading, and by reading, I mean books. Those things you hold in your hand that smell great will always leave me content, often enriched, and occasionally with just enough strength and stamina to return to my own flawed, imperfect story. Reading has proven to be my most effective tool for writing. All of this is a rather verbose way of saying, do more of whatever nourishes your soul and less of everything else.

A similar sentiment from my impatient, occasionally cynical Generation X side would say: Waiting for others to praise your writing when you can’t be bothered to read other people’s work is tacky. And supremely arrogant. Lest you remain under the assumption that everything you write is brilliant and will garner film offers with Meryl Streep in the lead role.

Inspiration Is Wonderful — And Highly Overrated

Putting off writing to wait for that elusive inspiration will ensure one thing only. A blank page or an empty screen. Some of my best work was a result of forcing myself to sit and write, despite not wanting to, or being scared, or not having the requisite inspiration. Sometimes you need to face the bleak reality of having tons to say and no clue where to start. Sorry, often the way to it, really is through it.

Do The Work

Be your toughest critic while also being generous of spirit. Which is to say, thoughtfulness, insight, and showing up to get the job done are free, and often translate to a sense of personal strength, endurance over time, and active empathy. Edit until it hurts. Then edit some more. If you can’t sign your name proudly at the end of a piece, rip it up and start again. Remember, “pretty and most current”, never won the Pulitzer. As I suggest in the subtitle, I envision myself as an ass, as in the stubborn donkey variety.

A Word On The Experts

Realize the things teachers have told you in class were not the only approach. Much of that material was sage, some of it not. Where does that leave you? How to decide if both are wrong, both are true, or if the answer lies somewhere in the middle?

Welcome to writing.

Where the questions are never ending, and most answers are gray, or varying shades thereof, and everything lives on a spectrum of context, situation, and the capacity of the individual to relate. Your best teachers will be the ones who love what they do, softly command attention, and treat their classrooms like an egalitarian, radically progressive experiment in discovering a student’s personal best. The worst ones will be the ones who are under the detrimental assumption they have nothing more to learn, or that knowledge sharing is one directional. These people treat their classrooms like classrooms as we’ve come to know and expect them.

Style And Other Intangibles

Realize that subtext, vibe, and emotional tone are, when utilized appropriately, an art form unto themselves. Know their nuances. Know their limitations. Perhaps, let Audrey Hepburn be your guide. Yes, you heard me. Why? Because she gave us the concept of less is more. Simple = better. Simple black vs neon green. Put another way, the reason your mother got dressed up, put the pearls on, then took the broach off. Less is more. Woefully underrated these days in so many more ways than fashion. Translation to the literary world is easy; excess anything does nothing more than cheaply diminish your writing. It’s like The Paris Review vs. Us magazine. Enough said?

A note about complimentary artistic pursuits: Learn what design is and is not. Remember that graphic design has just as much to do with words as it does with pictures. Though just because you can write well does not a graphic designer make. Trust those who reside on the other side of making your words look great. But a few basics can never hurt: When considering text, Times New Roman is a great typeface for fiction, any underused sans serif makes a nice headline, white as a background is always best. Helvetica is nice too, though similar to the popular high school cheerleader, her best years have passed. New Courier, however, can solidify your ability to impart random, universal observations into clean, eloquent and oh so nuanced prose. But then again, I could be biased.

Ditch The Comfort Zone

That thing that you think is the embodiment of all evil ever since time began? Maybe it’s just not your thing. That is to say, branch out! Own a pet. And love it with abandon. Read Joan Didion, David Sedaris, Carolyn Forchette, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Voltaire, and one of those novels you had to read for an assignment. (1984, The Handmaids Tale, East Of Eden.)

Find your own unique voice. Though contrary to popular opinion, that usually does not sound like a Tarantino wannabe who sneers dismissively at anything other than a shallow conception of what constitutes edgy. Let’s be clear, that is nothing more than a first year film student hiding what they lack in talent behind a black turtleneck and an unending irony-of-pop-culture missives.

And if we are talking memoir, you must be bold and brave. Don’t waste your effort playing the court jester of arcane nuance. Instead, step away from the herd that publish long winded, moderately well written rants of those that have done them wrong, past and present. Suck it up, and instead write the things you never thought you would. Write about the things that keep you up at night, about the lies built, and the absolution denied. Take a chance and be the one to reveal the human constant that is our collective gut rot of fear and shame. Trust me when I say that one authentically searing glance at the truth of where you live, is better than 1000 words that lack any meaningful introspection.

All that is simply a dramatic way of saying, if you are going to accept the challenge of writing authentically, whether fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction, it will be assumed you have done the work. The gritty, scary, heavy lifting work that is borne out of a mindful and practiced self awareness.

Love Helps

If you are fortunate enough to meet a person who cares about the same obscure things you do, hold on to them and don’t let them go. You may have found the elusive “one”. Romantic love happens at least once for all of us, I think. Relish it when it does, but understand you can do just as well with a few, “in it for the long haul”, close friends who truly know you and love you in spite of that fact. With them, you are tethered.

Perspective Is Your Friend

Remember, a writer’s only job is to observe and communicate truth. Easier said than done, and yeah, sometimes boundaries get complicated.

I once read an interview with the writer Kiara Brinkman, author of the bestselling first novel Up High In The Trees, where she discussed the attachment that developed to characters as she spent increasing time crafting and writing them into a novel length project.

“…Inhabiting this character for a couple of years did affect me personally. It was very intense. In the middle of a project I carry it around with me, even trying to experience the world as the character might. Writing this character turned up the volume on my own emotions. The world became brighter, more vivid, but could also be overwhelming. When I got stuck, I would take a break for a couple of weeks. My own brain needed a change. I got very attached to Sebby and had to write him into a place where I felt he would be safe, so it was important to end the book on a hopeful note….”

I know for myself, I learned that the hard way. Shortly after my MFA thesis was complete (a novel length work of fiction and alternate form short stories), I went through a brief phase of what could only be described as a mild depression, as my almost year long “relationship” with several complex characters I had created came to an abrupt end. It was a slow, grumbling acceptance to finally understand the experience as a loss, and a grieving for the characters who no longer occupied my imagination.

So, I guess my point is that you need to be careful. Nietzsche was on to something when he said “beware staring too long into the abyss, as it may eventually stare back into you.”

The Magical Den

I once read an interview with a well-known Canadian writer who leaves her house every morning, strolls to a little English cottage on the far corner of her wooded property, and spends her writing time undisturbed, creating while sipping hot cider, listening to nothing but the wind.

Damn, I want that cottage.

But alas, I have no cottage. While I’ve had some success with a few publishing ventures, I’ve been working on “the book” forever. One year, I rented space in what amounted to a private office. That lasted a total of a few days. But I also wrote at home, at my desk, on the balcony and on a couch. My couch, on my friend’s couch, on an antique chair passed down from I don’t know who, and in the food court of the Toronto Eaton Center. I wrote at the Biffs Bistro, Jet Fuel, Cafe 7ten, and a dozen Starbucks. I wrote on transatlantic flights, and I wrote at every job I’ve ever had. You may have a fantasy cottage/den/desk, too, but what are you going to do until that day?

Your Pocket Size Chest Of Treasures

Carry your little notebook (personally I have more than a mild obsession with Moleskine), or your iPhone, or something, anything, that you will use as a place to jot down, in the moment, the words, ideas, and sentences that you’ll otherwise forget. And yes, you will forget them.

Swallow Your Pride

I was a bit of a coward when I finished my undergrad, afraid to commit myself to literature, so instead I chose paramedic certification and the wildly impractical major of community health theory. But, despite a great job and a graduate degree in my field, I spent the next ten years feeling mildly insecure about my creative education, and it wasn’t until the MFA program that I began to realize just how little I knew. Workshops and peer feedback can be valuable (more on that below), but having to critically dissect a book a week for two years, page by page, often phrase by phrase, and figure out how each author planned, built, and executed the finished product, their story, was the second best thing I’ve done for myself as a writer. The first (if you’ve been paying attention), we have already covered. And no, you don’t need to commit yourself to the MFA. Take an extension class. Download a lecture from USC or Goddard. There’s no shame or admission of weakness in needing to be taught.

Keeping those skills? That’s another story entirely. Like anything, practice and consistency are your friends. So is constructive critique. Trust me, I was not a fan of critique either. It had the potential to be vomit inducing. Literally. But after spending two years in a program built on the workshop model, I came to appreciate and respect the benefit derived from meaningful critique. So share your work. Find others, get together, exchange work, gossip, share opportunities, gossip, tell your literary agent and/or editor horror stories, gossip some more, and who knows, maybe even share the occasional, though never frequent enough awesome news of a book deal. Again, you don’t need an MFA program for this. Find one or two friends who write, then make a commitment to the betterment of each other. Otherwise, find writers through workshops, local lit organizations, or even the net.

You Aren’t So Special

You will be rejected. Often. Get over it early, because it never really goes away. Though realize you are not alone. In the course of my MFA, while researching for an assignment, I stumbled upon an article about author rejections. The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Fiddlehead, and every other high end lit rag has rejected every single famous writer out there countless times. It doesn’t matter who you are. Raymond Carver, Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Walker, all know the sting of rejection. The best selling and wildly talented Wally Lamb, author of I Know This Much Is True, had his first novel, She’s Come Undone, rejected by Hyperion Books. Why? Because he submitted the manuscript typed in 13 point sans serif font instead of a 12 point serif. I wonder who’s laughing now?

Remember To Steep

I have a friend, a well-respected author with several successful novels and high profile articles under his belt, who hates revision. He works by slowly moving forward, perfecting each sentence as he goes along.

I can’t work that way, I would go insane. My first drafts are usually incomprehensible. I have a difficult time getting to the heart of what I’m feeling until I start writing about it, and even then it takes time, sometimes a few weeks, or months, or even years, till I get at my truest insight possible. I have to let each chapter sit, steeping like fine tea.

There Is More Than One Way Around The Block

What do I do when the infamous writer’s block hits? Easy. I put the pen down and walk away. I do the laundry, walk the dog, go out with friends, have a hot and nasty Skype session with someone I’ll never meet, anything that gets my mind and body away from the temptation to sit down and try again. Otherwise, my literary output would make “See Spot Run” a challenge. The motivation usually hits a day, maybe two days, occasionally a week later, and then I return.

At daCunha, each of our editors has their own unique way of breaking through a block.

Veronica Montes looks at pretty pictures:

I motivate myself by scrolling through the IG or Tumblr for Last Night’s Reading. The combination of words, color, and illustration inspire me to get back to work.

Lisa Renee turns domestic:

Any activity saves me from myself. As others said, taking a walk, cleaning, cooking — anything but writing usually helps get things flowing again. Reading sometimes helps, though sometimes just sends me deeper into my hole — I’ll never write anything half this good!

Hana Leshner gets organized:

I often find when I’m struggling with motivation or creative output it’s because I don’t really know what my story is about. What helps the most is organizing my thoughts by creating an outline and really walking myself mentally through the story. So whether it’s going back to the interview transcripts for a documentary piece, going back through source material for non-fiction, or working through all the plot beats for fiction, once I have a detailed outline down, the story then writes itself.

Grey Drane 🌀, Gloria DiFulvio, Tom Farr, and Oliver Shiny all have their own unique way as well. Find yours.

Factual Accuracy vs A Greater Truth

Since we are talking about insight, I find the ongoing debate over the dividing line between fiction and creative nonfiction to be both reductive and agenda dependent. It is also, at its core, intellectually dishonest. The idea that to be moved by experience requires a factually accurate narrative is insulting to our human capacity to know ourselves.

The semantic micro concerns of what constitutes fact, truth, and honesty will be debated until the end of time by those who find it dangerous to experience gut level awareness through the gestalt of theme and sub text. However, reading with a willing heart and an open mind is to experience the transformative resonance inherent in the collective truth of a great work. Predicating worth, meaning, and quality on factual accuracy is both tedious, and misses the entire fucking point.

You CAN Write What You Don’t Know

But if you do, you need to get it right. Whether creative nonfiction or fiction, if you are going to write about experiences or cultures that are not your own, you have an ethical responsibility to:

1. get it right the first time
2. not play to the easy, reductive stereotype
3. do no harm

Yes, that’s a tall order. But the implications, especially when writing about marginalized people or groups, often have potential to do real damage to real lives. You can help to guard against that by doing your research. Exhaustive, immersive research. You can ask questions. If you know someone who has experience with what you are writing about, have them take a good, close read. Have them give you their honest and critical feedback. And when they do, acknowledge them and their ideas. With intention, in your written work. If you don’t, there’s a word for that. Appropriation. What if you don’t know anyone with the experience you are writing about? Then that is a strong and reliable indication it’s not the topic for you.

I realize some may view this as creative inhibition akin to a kind of PC-like censorship. I prefer to view it as simply being mindful of the reality that our words have tremendous power. A power that mandates responsibility.

Full Disclosure

I freely admit, I routinely forget to follow my own suggestions. Life gets in the way, as do current events, as does the unexpected drama of family and friends, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, and the intestinal maladies of my two dogs. Okay, the second to last was a lie, and the last was probably too much information. However, the point I am attempting to make here is that writing matters. It’s important, to a lot of people. There will always be readers who want to disappear into a story, learn about other places, or step inside the skin of someone unlike themselves. Or, exactly like themselves. To have their world expanded, or have their hearts broken. To know the experience of reading a truth someone finally put into just the right words. Readers who feel, at the end of a book, more in touch with an emotion, or to experience that needed shift in perspective. They may even feel a little less alone in this cruel, chaotic world. Because think about it; why you need to read, is why you need to write.

Interested in publishing your own writing? DaCunha is now accepting submissions year round. Check it out here.

In 2006 Allan Rae left a career as a flight paramedic to obtain his MFA in creative nonfiction. Today he is a qualitative public health researcher exploring the intersections of HIV, PTSD, and stigma, through personal and community narrative. Allan is also the editorial lead for creative nonfiction at daCunha. Starbucks, satire, and dogs do not displease him.

The Making Of

Am I a lightweight Luddite? I think I might be a lightweight Luddite. It’s true that I have a robust attachment to the Internet and my phone, but it’s nothing compared to the way in which I swoon helplessly in the face of paper (Tomoe River paper, to be exact), writing instruments that require no tapping of the fingers, newsstands and, most of all, shelves lined with book after book after glorious, glorious book.

This is a photograph of El Ateneo Grand Splendid, a majestic Buenos Aires bookstore housed in a theater that was built in 1919:

I visit this store often in my dreams and, if I had to guess, I’d say you’ll be doing the same tonight.

There’s no getting around the fact that we at daCunha.global relish our natural Internet habitat. Named after a tiny archipelago where only the most curious dare to venture, our online space is 100% stories. It can be disconcerting at first because we have no publishing dates: nothing is old, nothing is new, everything just…is. Here are some OTHER things we don’t have: feeds, comments, adverts, and recommendations. It’s just you and the art, hanging out and being awesome together.

As sweet as all that is, there are days (and nights!) when only books will do. I used to treat my books with great care but now—with the exception of a special few—I find myself underlining like crazy, dog-earing pages, bending spines to my liking, and lending them out with abandon. I’ve since found out that my daCunha cohorts are also fans of reading the old-fashioned way. It makes sense, then, that we’ve decided to explore the world of traditional publishing.

For our first analog offering — daCunha Anthology № 1 — our editorial team re-visited all of the short stories published on daCunha.global during our first year and, after a series of rollicking Slack debates, we pinpointed our fifteen favorites to share. Fun fact: a handful of contributors including Jeff Elkins, Paul Fitzpatrick, E.Viona, Gutbloom, Kristy Arbuckle Lommen, and benjamin weinberg are writers we first met here on Medium!

daCunha Anthology № 1 will be available next month (we’ll keep you posted!). Meanwhile, if you’re a writer of fiction or nonfiction, please submit your work any time; we’d love to read it.

Click here to submit your fiction or nonfiction to daCunha.

If accepted your work will appear online, of course, but could also become an audio story brought to life by professional actors, part of a live daCunha Experience, the subject of discussion at a Story Lover’s Club or, as you’ve just discovered, published in a traditional print anthology.

Thanks for reading!

~Veronica

Veronica is Fiction Editrix at daCunha.global. Her collection of short fiction, Benedicta Takes Wing, is forthcoming from Philippine American Literary House. Learn more here.

It seems like I’m always trying to work on a new story, even before I finish the one I’m working on. Because I have a lot of ideas, I write a lot of short stories, but I’m beginning to spend more time on more long form fiction as well. In order to do this well, there are a few tools I try to make use of that make the process more intuitive.

For Creative Planning and Productivity

Trello

Trello is a project management tool that uses boards to organize information. I have a Trello board for overall productivity, dividing my tasks into categories such as Planning, In Progress, Backburner, and Completed. Whenever I complete a task that was in progress, I simply drag the card representing that task from the In Progress list to the Completed list.

It’s also great for organizing projects. I’ve recently begun using it to outline stories. As you’ll see in the photo below, I create lists for each act of a longer story, as well as a list for possible scenes. I can brainstorm scene ideas in the Possible Scenes list and begin to move them around between the four act divisions to build out the story. In this way, Trello acts like a cork board where you spread out index cards.

When I’m finished outlining the story, I can print it out and have it next to me as I’m writing the story.

The thing I love most about Trello is that it’s web-based and it syncs between devices. I can look at my boards on my laptop when I’m at home, but if I’m out, I can easily pull up my boards on the Trello iPhone app.

For Research

Two resources I use frequently for research are Wikipedia and Quora. Wikipedia is, of course, an encyclopedia of user-generated content, but it has a lot of accurate information that I can use to research locations, vocations, concepts, weapons, or really anything else I need to have background information on in order to write a more realistic story.

Quora is my favorite place to research, however, and there’s a great iOS app where I can do research on my phone when I’m out and about (Wikipedia has an app as well). Quora is a place where users can ask questions and other users can answer those questions. I found this particularly helpful when researching about illusions and illusionists for my current work-in-progress.

For Capturing Information

Pocket

Once upon a time, I used Evernote to capture information, and I still use it sometimes, but not as often as I once did. I read a lot and often come upon interesting articles online while I’m scrolling through social media that I want to come back to later because I don’t have the time at the moment or it’s something I want to revisit.

Recently, I’ve been using Pocket to capture information that I find interesting. The great thing about Pocket is that I can save articles on my laptop or my iPhone and use the Pocket app to read all of my favorite articles in one place. I can also give articles tags, such as writing, teaching, research, and so on.

For The Actual Writing

Google Docs

I’ve been a Google fan for many years. I work in education, so Google has become a way of life to a degree. Though there are tools like Scrivener, I always find myself going back to an open Google Doc.

But when I’m not writing in Google Docs…

Novelize is a great web-based alternative to Scrivener that syncs across devices. I use this when I’m deep into a novel project and Google Docs just isn’t cutting it.

Amazon Storywriter is my go-to program for screenwriting. It’s web-based and highly intuitive because it utilizes Fountain file syntax. The great thing about Storywriter is that it imports and exports Final Draft, Fountain, and PDF files. I wrote the entire Remnant 13 pilot on Storywriter.

When All Else Fails…

Truth be told, I try to stay organized and loyal to the tools I embrace, but I get bored easily and sometimes I just need to shake up the process. So sometimes I’ll pull out a notebook and scratch out ideas by hand. Sometimes I’ll pull up a different word processor just for a different feel. Sometimes the tools get shoved aside so that I can just be free.

Which leads me to the most important tool of all…

Imagination

Mine is relentless, and I’m grateful. It’s why I’m a teacher, and it’s why I love to create stories.

The world doesn’t always look the way the deepest part of me senses it should, so I imagine what it would be like if it were, what it would take to get there, and the words that would need to be said to move people in that direction.

Tom Farr is a writer, teacher, and storyteller who believes in crafting lies to tell the truth. When he’s not enjoying the good life with his beautiful wife Lindsey and their three much-adored children, he’s striving to create stories that thrill and inspire and preparing for the day Disney calls him to write a Star Wars movie. He’s also a contributing editor for daCunha. His work has also appeared on Panel & Frame, Wordhaus, Curiosity Never Killed the Writer, and The Unsplash Book. Check out his fiction writing portfolio on Medium and sign up for his author newsletter.

Interested in publishing your own writing? DaCunha is now accepting submissions year round. Check it out here.

A call for submissions from daCunha

We invite you to end 2016 on an upswing (because let’s face it, guys: we could all use an upswing at this point) by submitting your finely honed fiction or nonfiction to our publication:

daCunha Submission Manager

Do you run the risk of rejection? Of course you do! Wouldn’t that be just the worst? Sure, for a few minutes it would be the worst thing ever. But what if we accept your piece? What if you could end up like this guy? Give it a chance, is what we’re saying. But before you do, get a taste for what we’re all about by reading a few of our free stories:

In Fiction: “A Faint, Cautionary Creee” by Bari Lynn Hein beat out more than 100 other submissions to win our first annual Made Up Words contest. It’s a beautiful meditation on love, family, and letting go.

A Faint, Cautionary Creee * Fiction * daCunha.global

In Nonfiction: daCunha Nonfiction Editor alto explores the role of anger and outrage in the fight for LGBTQ equality in “Where Is My Anger, You Ask?”

Where Is My Anger, You Ask? * nonfiction * daCunha.global

If you’re ready to submit, we’d love to read your work. Go ahead: tell us a story.

~Veronica
Editrix, daCunha Fiction

Notes on Living the Creative Life

Brought to you by the creative team at daCunha

Are you an artist? Are you making something to keep the lights on or simply to feed your cherished dreams? Are you, like so many of us, chasing that creative life? Staring off into the great beyond, dreaming of creation, courting the muse, wringing your hands, banging your head on the desk?

We know exactly how it feels. Though we spend so much of our time reading, editing, designing, and discussing, we are all artists seeking the time and space and juice to create our own stuff. So we’re building a new publication called Matters of the Art. We’ve put Subtext to bed, transitioned Made Up Words to our permanent fiction home, and now we want to share insight, inspiration, and motivation with you, the artists and creators of the world. We want to talk about the art.

Devotion to a creative life can be challenging. Blocks and rejection, seeking inspiration while trying to pay the bills, worrying that it’s all for naught, wondering if the well of talent has dried up. Process, patience, persistence, presentation — whatever work of art you’re trying to bring to light, there are so many questions and qualms, so many pieces of the big puzzle of creation that we’re all juggling.

With this publication, we are hoping to explore our personal experiences with the creative life. Our victories, our injuries, our fun, and our struggles. Our workspaces and communities, tools and beverages. Whatever fuels the fires of creativity, we’re hoping to examine here.

So, join us. If you are seeking or chasing your creativity and want to connect with others who are navigating their way through a creative life, check in with our new home for everything creative.

I think it’s going to be grand fun.

Here’s a taste of what’s to come —

• Veronica Montes will gift us with “The Proper Care and Feeding of Artists.”
• Tom Farr will weigh in with “Tools for the Creative Life.”
• Grey Drane 🌀 will examine the challenge of finding time for creativity in the midst of the commitments of daily life.
• Oliver Shiny will tell us about “The Necessity of Adventure and What Charles Baudelaire Has to Say about It.”
• alto will explore “Introspection and Some Distance.”
• Lisa Renee will write about her lack of workspace, her strange meandering approach to writing, and her suspicion that settling down might be the golden ticket.

Meanwhile, if you have fiction, non-fiction, audio, or other art that you’re ready to send out into the world, we’d love to see it at daCunha. We’re open for submissions from November 1st — November 10th. Visit our Submittable page and get started!

~ Lisa Renee

A Message for Our Contributors

Hello and happy fall!

We, the team at daCunha, are making some exciting changes we’d like to share. Made Up Words is retiring, and we will be unveiling a new blog here at Medium very soon. This means that your story will revert to your own page, as we will only be publishing new work at our fabulous permanent residence, daCunha.global.

We are so grateful to all of you for helping us build a home for fiction on Medium, and we hope that you will visit us in our new location. We also encourage all of you to submit to daCunha — we are working very hard to create a space for exciting creative work, and are always searching for gems. Check out our recent call for submissions:

Call for Submissions: daCunha Fiction

Thanks to all the creative minds who helped launch Made Up Words — we look forward to seeing you at daCunha!

Dr. Harrison Solow
Heather Skye
Alexander Nimos
Kat Doherty
Hana Leshner
Davy Carren
Dave Salanitro
jayetomas
James Gallagher
Glenn Burney
Mike Robertson
Kel Campbell
belles-lettres — 
Bryan Schultz
John Homan
Kristin
Natalie Carioti
Ernio Hernandez
Jack Herlocker
Zachary Walchuk
Emily Wilcox
Rachel Moore
Giles Selig
David Miller
sena
Eric Toupin
Federico Leto
Notorious DCI
Torgrim Kvernavann
Charles Kunene
Michael Luo
Nikki Bee Williams
H. A. Eugene
Travis Turner
Kezia Wineberg
E.Viona

daCunha Fiction (formerly Made Up Words) is open for submissions through October 10th.

“Time passes. Listen. Time passes.” ~ Dylan Thomas, Under Milkwood

As the calendar year draws to a close, we want to know: have you been listening? What stories have you captured? What tale will you tell? Speaking of time, do you have a story that someone might read on the train to work and still be thinking about on the way home? Send us that story. That’s the one we want.

We’re open to many genres including, but not limited to, literary, science fiction, speculative, gothic, historical, flash, and fairytales. We do not publish fan fiction or erotica.

We ask that you read our recently updated general submission guidelines for more information (don’t miss out on the links at the bottom!).

We look forward to reading your work! Be sure to use the proper short story format. Need an example?

Finally, for your reference: daCunha.global.

We’re open for submissions through October 10th.

Ready to send us your work? Get to it.