Fight for Your Rite of Spring
Don't worry, it's just me getting ready to write something new
Its been a little bit since I’ve posted or sent out an update. Since January—that’s just a few months now. The snow has all melted, the temps are up, and there’s daffodils popping up in the yard.
In January, when we threw out the old and in with the new, I decided to try my hand at writing, and managed to publish a very short story. I did it hastily, rapidly, and without much revision or notes. All the thanks go to Jami Attenberg and her #1000 Words project. You all got it in your inboxes, as I wrote it, raw and unpolished, and in many cases, without knowing where the story would take me the very next day.
Since then I’ve had some time to reflect. The short version is, I really enjoyed doing that, and I’d like to continue, but a little differently, because, well, you’ll see.
Mike’s Place is now available in a few places.
It will always be here on this Substack, the raw, un-edited, serialized version, which you can go and explore as if it were the first time you’ve seen it.
Mike’s Place is also now available online for free as a single “thing” you can read over at https://books.micahwalter.com - This will grow into an archive of these projects and will always be up to date with the “finished" version.” (whatever that means.)
If you are an Amazon Kindle fan, you can also find it there, either as a $5 (Fugazi pricing) download or for free via KindleUnlimited.
Mike’s Place was fun to write, and afterward I realized I limited myself by making it very fast and short. But I can say “I did that” and that’s always nice.
Now, it’s Spring, and daffodils and all. I have been working on a new project, outlining, and digging deep into my soul for the ideas. Jami is of course launching a new 1000 Words project, so here we go.
This April, I’ll kick things off, with the bulk to be written in May-June. I won’t be posting something every day, unless it happens to happen that way, but I’ll be posting the un-revised versions as they are ready.
This will be a much lengthier work. Longer than a short story, but I don’t know how long really yet. It doesn’t matter. It’s also going to be a very cold story, which is weird to be writing over the course of the warmer months, but that’s what’s going to happen.
The story is called “Low Rise” and takes place in wintery Rochester, New York, where I was in fact born, and where I did in fact go to college, but I don’t really think of as home. As usual, it’s a fictionalized account of something that did happen, where names, details, and many of the specific circumstances have been changed, altered, misremembered or just dreamt up out of thin air. Mostly out of thin air this time.
I hope you will enjoy it.
-m
~ 1998-ish