Life on the Midlist lands soon: failure math, goal creep, and why so many “geniuses” thought they’d blown it. If you’ve ever moved the goalposts on yourself, this one’s for you. Hitting inboxes shortly. Sign up to get your free copy: www.ryantpozzi.com/midlist

I mean, of course Joyce Carol Oates is a national treasure, but I have to admit "Joyce Carol Oates: The Next Captain of the Resistance" was not on my bingo card.

What a naked betrayal of supposed party principles. You got an agreement to follow an existing federal law and a "promise" to hold an ACA vote (that you don't have the votes to win) in December. I'll be changing my voter registration to leave the Democratic Party in the morning.

Reason #112 to join Life on the Midlist: You don't want to be surprised all the time like I was. "I'm supposed to wait how long? Okay. Then what happens? Wait, what does that even mean?" www.ryantpozzi.com/midlist

Me: Love, would you say I'm "angsty"? Her: No, of course not. I'd just think it. #MarriageIsCompromise

It's no secret I've struggled with motivation and gotten behind lately so it's worth a little celebrating that I just finished writing next Tuesday's edition of Life on the Midlist and it's only Friday. Sign up, quick, before the weekend wipes your brain and you forget: www.ryantpozzi.com/midlist

Me: Love, would you say I'm "angsty"? Her: No, of course not. I'd just think it. #MarriageIsCompromise

Apropos of nothing, I can't stop thinking about how we built a Jim Henson Tribute dinner in 2013 - puppets, songs, dinner of frog legs, pork belly, and Swedish meatballs for something like $25 - and a lady called my office to see if Jim Henson would be there. "Uhhh, no ma'am. He died 23 years ago."

I'm all for normalizing discussions of mental health and therapy, but I think some post about it expecting folks to say, "YOU have a therapist? No way! Not you." Knowing many us well, I can tell you I've never had that reaction. I'm usually closer to, "Yeah, that checks out," or "Finally! Damn."

I'm still pretty unstructured in my posting since I came back from my sanity pause. On This Day and that kind of stuff will probably come back. So far, though, I've just felt more like chatting. I like to think of socials as me in a room just talking constantly. 🤏🧵

I'm not saying anything dark, but this waking up to another day over and over again gets old sometimes. Doctors and meds never stop. Bills never stop. Cooking never stops. 🫤😱 (We're in a friendly cleaning standoff, as in I'm very disabled and she's very busy, so we can skip that one for now.)

Coming in HOT. Sometimes I read criticism of bookshops as I'm scrollingIt's usually about how they should do more to support this or that specific kind or genre of author. Every time I see it, I think: Tell me you've never owned a business without telling me you've never owned a business. 🤏🧵

I voted the CRAP out of that election. 🎆🎆🎆

One of the small pleasures of sending Life on the Midlist is that most weeks I get an email back from a subscriber who wants to chat in a little more depth about whatever I've rambled about in the latest edition. Those conversations are so valuable, even nourishing, for my spirit and my resolve.

New Life on the Midlist: Trade publishing doesn’t pay like you think. Most authors survive on unseen scaffolding like partner income or low housing costs. I name mine and map my long game approach. Sign up now before today's edition hits inboxes over the lunch hour: www.ryantpozzi.com/midlist

My people: I'm not mad or bitter. I get a little anxious, but there's probably no stopping that. My debut will come out next year-ish from the perfect house (for that book, at least) and, in spite of all odds being against me from there, I'll do whatever I have to do to sustain some sort of career.

Okay, I have open enrolled. Our total premium payments will increase by just over 200%. This was achieved by changing plans since our current plan is set to increase by almost 250%. Increases of 200+% are reasonable annual cost increases for ethical companies in a working system, right? RIGHT?

I won't feed the publishing myth. My case: 1. We can live on my wife's salary alone. 2. My only jobs are writing and loading the dishwasher. 3. If I fail as an author, only my pride gets hurt. That's privilege. My wins don't prove midlisters can build careers without safety nets. I'm skeptical.

What's funny about having celebrity relatives is that when I miss my little sisters-in-law, I can always just fire up the ole Netflix account.

If I get REALLY honest about it, I started writing books on the off chance that I might get to meet @zadiesmith.bsky.social some day. 💯 If we both live long enough, it could still happen.

I just listened to my first @chucktingle.bsky.social interview. Just listening to him interact and vamp around the topic of art, authenticity, and publishing for 90 minutes just made me a lifelong fan. #booksky #writingcommunity

While I've struggled to make peace with my place in publishing given the draconian nature of the industry (for both trad and indie, just in different ways), I do really appeciate the folks who have taken the time to reach out with general encouragement, their own war stories, etc. #writingcommunity

Ahhh, every diabetic's REAL high holy day - the first day of ACA Open Enrollment.

I feel bad for my wife who has to work boh jobs today on the highest holy day of Halloween. She's on the clock from 9am to 7pm. After the commute, she won't be home until after the Trick or Treaters start to clear out of our neighborhood. What can I do to help the day still feel special for her?

Equipment replaced. Internet access restored. Mostly I learned that the level of my dependence on connectivity is a little frightening.

I wrote and sent the newsletter edition that had been specifically requested. I forgot to change the email title from last week so it's been deleted unopened at a shocking rate. #newsletterfail #writingcommunity

On This Day in History: October 26, 1977 In Somalia, health workers confirmed the world’s last naturally occurring case of smallpox. Three years later the WHO certified eradication, only possible because of a global vaccination campaign. But sure, tell me again about the dangers of vaccines.

On This Day in History: October 26, 1916 Police arrested Margaret Sanger for “obscenity” after she opened a birth control clinic in Brooklyn and shared information women needed to control their lives. The law called contraception obscene. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

✉︎ Postcards from the Mess ✉︎ As we fade to black on Mary Shelley, forget the Year Without a Summer. Start with the journal where she imagines her dead child warm by the fire. Frankenstein reads differently when you begin there. What shapes your work that few will understand?

I'm struggling with my two WIP manuscripts. I can't decide which book should be the sophomore effort. One is a more natural thematic follow-on while the other is more commercially viable. Neither is lighting me up right now, but the work must continue. How should I decide which to pursue? #BookSky

On This Day in History: October 25, 2022 New Zealand’s Parliament became majority women when Soraya Peke-Mason was sworn in, tipping the House to 60 women and 59 men. The first country to grant women the vote in 1893, then a female majority in 2022? Those Kiwis are out here leading by example.

On This Day in History: October 25, 2016 Paul Beatty won the Man Booker Prize for The Sellout, the first American winner after the prize opened to U.S. authors in 2014. A ruthless, funny novel about race and memory that made people squirm and still took the crown.

On This Day in History: October 25, 1978 John Carpenter’s Halloween opened, with Donald Pleasence and a debuting Jamie Lee Curtis anchoring a shoestring indie that rewrote horror’s playbook. It's all about the blank mask, the quiet suburb, and that relentless synth score. 'Tis the season!

On This Day in History: October 25, 1962 John Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize in Literature. He put migrant workers and small towns at the center of American letters; the fight over whether that counts as capital L literature says more about the judges than the work.

On This Day in History: October 25, 1938 Here's one from my home state; not quite a hotbed of progressive thinking. Archbishop Francis J. L. Beckman of Dubuque, IA denounced swing as a “degenerated musical system” that would gnaw the moral fiber of youth and lead them down a “primrose path to hell.”

Writing and publishing really is a small world. Villain Era was one of my first publication credits and, though we haven't been in touch for several years now, Cat is an excellent poet who lives in the next town over from me.

Genius is Complicated Mary Shelley made a monster and the world turned her into a muse. She edited Percy to preserve him and was paid back with erasure and “authorship” debates dressed up as criticism. Read “The Last Man” to see the writer the myth tried to hide. #GeniusIsComplicated #BookSky

I call this one: When You Get Married, Your Friends Have One of Two Reactions

After 195 journal rejections this year, they don't usually faze me anymore but I got a rejection this week for an experimental form piece that I was convinced was a perfect fit for the journal. It's the first no that's "hurt" in a while. At least that means I'm not COMPLETELY dead inside. 🙂

On This Day in History: October 24, 1818 Felix Mendelssohn, age 9, gave his first public concert in Berlin. He would write the Octet at sixteen and the Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture at seventeen; remember his sister Fanny, equally brilliant, by some accounts moreso, was told to stay in the salon.

I spend large parts of every day reading about historical events. So far I've learned: -Humans do terrible things in the name of God and country -The powerful will do anything to stay in power -Leaders who say they care about you usually don't -Nearly everything happening now has happened before

On This Day in History: October 23, 1844 Robert Bridges was born. He became Poet Laureate from 1913 to 1930 and wrote The Testament of Beauty, but his lasting gift was editing and publishing the poems of his friend Gerard Manley Hopkins in 1918. If you love the poem God’s Grandeur, thank Bridges.

On This Day in History: October 23, 1731 A fire at Ashburnham House gutted Sir Robert Cotton’s manuscript library. Asser’s Life of King Alfred was destroyed, and one of the only two copies of the 1215 Magna Carta exemplifications was burned into near-illegibility, melting its seal. #BookSky

Messy Genius Spotlight English novelist Mary Shelley (1797–1851) At eighteen, grieving her dead infant and cut off from her family, she wrote Frankenstein, a reckoning with creation and abandonment. She kept writing through loss, with titles like The Last Man, refusing to be anyone’s muse. #BookSky

Hey, every thriller and spy flick since the 90s. You keep getting caught because the green webcam light is on when it shouldn't be. Are you telling me that in 30-some years no one has figured out how to remotely disable the little green light? But you know how to hack impenetrable networks? Okay.

Happy Wins-day! On October 23, 2025, Bloomsbury launches eleven dyslexia-friendly editions with research-backed design: clear sans serif, generous spacing, ragged-right, cream paper, reduced-contrast blue text, bold not italics. Anything that makes books more accessible to folks is a BIG WIN!

On This Day in History: October 21, 2024 London’s Neal’s Yard Dairy reported a sophisticated fraud to police: about 22 tons, roughly 950 wheels, of award-winning clothbound Cheddar vanished, worth more than £300,000, after a buyer posed as a French distributor. Who doesn’t like a good cheese caper?

On This Day in History: October 21, 1949 Aldous Huxley wrote to George Orwell to congratulate him on Nineteen Eighty-Four and argued the future would look more like Brave New World, with consent engineered by pleasure and habit more than fear. He was right. Orwell was, too.