Luke Wortley

My day today. Big 12 Conference Championships + first two rounds of the INAUGURAL NCAA WOMEN’S WRESTLING CHAMPIONSHIPS!

Did this get pulled from the Apple Podcasts feed? I saw it this morning and then it disappeared. Can’t get it to show back up no matter how much I refresh.

Thinking of submitting to a call for short story collections. Haven't thought about prose in a very long time. What do these numbers say to you ?

~55,000 words
16 stories: 4 flash, 4 in the awkward 2k range, and 7 full-length (ranging from 3k to 8k words)
12 published, 4 unpubbed

As part of the project, kids read books by Joy Harjo and Billy Collins and @mehpoeting.bsky.social and, yes, Rupi Kaur, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Maxine Kumin and @lukewortley.bsky.social and Nikki Giovanni and Wendell Berry and Shakespeare and previously unknown-to-me poets from Ukraine and

This is the greatest honor of my literary life.

Short Story, Long | Aaron Burch | Substack Longer short stories, published biweekly. Click to read Short Story, Long, by Aaron Burch, a Substack publication with thousands of subscribers.

Short Story, Long submissions open one more week. They close midnight, next Saturday!

Longer stories (~3k-8k words), every other week, accompanied by an interview with the author the following week, and every story paired with original art commissioned for the story. (Writer & Artist paid $150)

I'm not going to pretend that it isn't a lot my fault for being largely insufferable during a very prolonged state of mental instability, but there were a lot of circumstances that were very much outside my control, and there was absolutely nowhere to go, and I still feel like it's inaccessible

Very much so, yes.

I just don't even know where to start...I can't get past the "this is going to be terrible anyway" or the "what's the point? none of this matters because I don't have anything meaningful to contribute that others aren't already...and better?" or "will I even be able to finish in total isolation?"

I don't really know how else to describe it. Just feels like literary life completely passed me by, and there's no hopping back in.

I'm not trying to be combative. I want to keep writing. I feel so much worse when I'm not writing, but I can't tell if that's just a post-MFA-justification narrative or if it's actually fulfilling some genuine purpose for me personally, independent of publication. I don't know the difference anymore

I understand that. I'm not trying to invalidate that, but it feels a lot like putting a crayon drawing up on the fridge considering the experience with that press and the way it was handled and how few people, including close friends and family, even looked at it. It was a mess.

To be mediocre at best? No, probably not. It seems selfish, almost myopic, to sit down and write my stupid little dreamscapes and attempt something when I could be playing with my kids or participating in other helpful work. I don't even know if I can legitimately call myself an artist, to be honest

For me, I have always been incapable of finding value in almost anything I do without external validation. It's basically my identity at this point. I can't get over knowing that I'm probably just a mediocre writer without being part of anything and probably don't have anything worth contributing.

Totally. I'm just having trouble finding that joy because I feel like "what happens after" is the only reflection of my value as a writer. I feel like it's not worth my time as a parent, partner, community member, etc. to lock myself in my head and continue if I'm not actually making anything good

Any advice for picking yourself off the mat when book publication almost killed every ounce of desire you had to continue writing?

Trouble for me now vis a vis writing literary fiction or poetry is that I kinda dropped out of literary life because I felt there was no place for me personally, even if my work was still being accepted by editors for publication. Not in a whiny way but more in a "I don't belong here anymore" way.

The Cardboard Chronicle: Issue 0.5 A brief explanation of why this thing stopped and will start again...and some level setting

My writing efforts are being channeled currently into something that brings me joy, which is still tabletop gaming. Here's what I like at this moment in time, and you can see my game shelf! Please read and consider subbing to THE CARDBOARD CHRONICLE: open.substack.com/pub/lukewort...

Super late to the party, but I gotta get my thoughts together on the first semester of competition of the NCAA D1 wrestling season. What a fascinating year.

Whatever. I am gonna post more here. I’m gonna try to just not care and share my thoughts hoping to see if anyone cares about similar shit that I do lol

Hey y'all, please share or support this if you can. Our trans local journalism co-op's facing a lot right now. This city is still a disaster zone in many ways and, well, it ain't exactly easy to be trans.

Any help is appreciated.

A single line from a literary magazine form rejection letter after over a year of sitting inactive that reads: "Ultimately, while we didn't feel that your work was quite right for [Journal Name Here] at this time, we are grateful to have read it."

This was the thing that finally turned the knob for me back to "on to the next one." I've submitted one thing in the last 13 months - a packet of poems. It's reflective of all the things I hate about the literary publishing world. One cold sentence. 13 months of inactivity. No pay even if accepted.

ADDICTION, FOR SCALE A squirrel eating a star in the mouth of god

Barton Smock

@bartonsmock.bsky.social

“Inheritance” by Luke Wortley “My father’s horns come in during the divorce proceedings. They erupt, seemingly overnight, arcing around the sides of his head in a ribbed, cochlear spiral, ending in rounded tips.”

New Short Story, Long story tomorrow!

In the meantime… published this amazing @lukewortley.bsky.social story around this time last year!

"My father’s horns come in during the divorce proceedings. They erupt, seemingly overnight, arcing around the sides of his head in a ribbed, cochlear spiral…"

All social media genuinely makes me feel bad about myself, but if I ever want hope of returning to some form of a literary life, then I have to at least be tangentially connected to it, and I am just not sure how sustainable that is.

Vaccines cause adults
Tylenol causes pain relief
Neurodiversity is good

I've often thought about what I would've done differently, and I don't think I did anything wrong. I tried my best in isolation to market t, had challenges beyond my control, and ultimately relied on the goodwill of a few folks, and I'll be forever grateful. Just wasn't enough to sell more than 10

Plus being a parent without options for babysitting, etc., it's not feasible. The honest truth is that the literary community doesn't feel much like a community an overwhelming majority of the time -- in person and online. My first book pub really taught me a lot, and none of it positive.

there's a lot here in Indy...it's just fraught. my MFA program dominates a lot of the local scene, and they literally pretended my first book didn't exist.

I’m finding it hard to make meaning out of anything. No friends locally. No family locally. Third career, one I don’t care about even slightly but had to remove myself from previous one for many reasons. Total isolation. I try to do stuff. Just doesn’t matter. Nobody to talk to about anything