From Intrusions of Grace to Write Culture
On My Substack Name Change
Dear Subscribers,
Thank you for showing up for me so early in this newsletter’s life. Many of you read outside of the Substack platform and I know a couple of you fiddled through frustration to make an account just so you could hit the “like” heart and comment on my posts. Your efforts are appreciated!
I want to celebrate some writing milestones with you and let you know of some changes I’ve made to my newsletter, including a name change.
Something to know about Substack is that authors name their newsletters (blogs) and present descriptions about the content of the writing and what subscribers can expect. This was a good challenge for me to consider when I started my own account and newsletter.
Intrusions of Grace
I spent weeks considering the most permeating themes in my personal writing and the overarching concerns of my favorite reading. As I wrote through it, the nourishing fat of grace rose to the surface. Grace from God. Grace towards each other. Grace in the moments we don’t initially see as grace. Grace in the ways too big to miss.
Flannery O’ Connor, a woman well acquainted with reconciling her faith through hardships, wrote about grace in its hard to swallow forms. When I re-read her musings in Mystery and Manners, I knew I had my newsletter name.
“Our age not only does not have a very sharp eye for the almost imperceptible intrusions of grace, it no longer has much feeling for the nature of the violences which precede and follow them.”1
Thus, Intrusions of Grace.
I lurked on Substack for a while before committing to the name and publishing my first post. This May, I’ll celebrate one year of posting consistently here.
In that time, I have published six flash fiction pieces (1,000 words) to serve as background vignettes for characters in other fiction I’m working on; I encouraged you to copy Scripture to focus on God’s Word, sharing several plans to get you started; and I began my own version of Fantastic Fridays, which has become a fun tradition for my kids. And there is so much more lined up for my second year here.
While grace is certainly the broad experience I have been writing from, the topics that most inspire me and get me riled up for conversation are even more specific. And that helped me when it was time to name an LLC for freelance work.
Write Culture
Over the last fifteen years, I have picked up freelance writing and website work here and there, but have taken long breaks between having babies. Raising my children and running my home is still my number one vocation for the time being, but lately I have had more bandwidth and more focus for writing. Late last year, I formed Write Culture, LLC and started taking on jobs again.
It didn’t take long to come up with the name as I thought through the topics that have held my interest since high school. I LOVE talking about culture. High culture, sub culture, work culture, youth culture, all of it… I’ll nose dive into any documentary and footnote reading lists for any hint of culture conversations.
Write Culture says everything about the writing I’m interested in crafting and in reading. So I decided it makes sense to change this newsletter name to reflect the purpose and my business name, which ultimately serves my readers by knowing what to expect.
On Substack and This Newsletter
I hope that writing under the banner of Write Culture further clarifies why I’m here.
I’m here for books, music, film talks, and all things faith and culture. It matters that we pay attention to all of these reflections of the people around us. It matters that we enjoy and celebrate the good, true, and beautiful aspects of human culture.
I’m here for the thinkers reaching towards the How Now Shall We Live? questions. I’m here to probe The Christian Mind and have the Christ and Culture talks. And, hopefully, to do it with humility and hope.
Grace Culture
I’m still writing from the perspective of grace—much of it an intrusion—and toward a vibrant culture of grace towards each other and hope for the world.
In my fiction work, that looks like characters facing hardships that aren’t often neatly tied up in a bow for the reader’s satisfaction. My characters weather the storms that grace rides in on and have to squint to see the beacon of hope or, scarier, trust others to help them find it. And none of this happens apart from my character’s interactions within the broader culture, as I am very focused on how the arts and our relationship to communications history affects our personal and communal experiences.
In my freelance work, a culture of grace looks like humbly listening to others to understand where they are coming from and what they need in the writing work. I want to know what culture they are serving and creating and how can we write content that serves that goal. With the rise of AI and the automation of people work, I am most focused on collaborating with clients to write in a way that emphasizes the humanity within their workplaces and institutions, regardless of their size. I help clients write towards the culture they want to grow.
You’ll see echoes of my freelance work and my fiction craft in the content here. As I grow in grace, I see how all of my writing efforts are intertwined, working together to soften my heart and shape my craft.
Content You Can Expect
There are strands of all of the above throughout my posting schedule, which will include these main focuses, which give me joy to write about in what margins of spare time I can grab these days:
Content on faith, culture, and/or the writing process
Reading Roundups from my world of varied reading
Fantastic Fridays, which includes my car karaoke song of the week, weekly reflection, and random things I simply must share with you ASAP
Thank you for showing up for me and engaging with the content. I pray it serves you well in your days and look forward to more faith and culture conversations with each other!
With more in store,
Alexis
Flannery O’Connor, “On Her Own Work,” in her Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, ed. Sally Fitzgerald and Robert Fitzgerald, pp. 107-118
I can’t wait!!!