Then we discussed three poems and two stories from this month’s issue. This week it was “My old pen” by Simbarashe Chirikure, “Just Tell Me No” by Blake Jessop, “Sharpen Your Tools” by Saroj Kumar Senapati, “Bravo Checkpoint” by P. M. Alexander and “City of Diamonds” by Hallie Rae.

Next week we will be sharing stories and poems from the newly released September issue No. 154, the September cover and more on the Linzner Awards. As promised, you can vote on your favorite work in Space & Time here.

That’s all for Episode 20. We will be back next Monday at 2:30 pm EST. Until then, thank you for Reading Space & Time.

Get more from Angela Yuriko Smith in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

Covey points out that before takeoff, the pilot has a destination and a flight plan. Crammed back in the passenger section, we think the pilot follows a line from point A to point B, when in truth the plane will spend most of the journey slightly off course. Wind pushes against it, weather develops, turbulence happens and conditions change. The plane still arrives because the pilot keeps making small adjustments.

That idea changed the way I understood staying on course.

Until then, I tended to think of progress as all or nothing. Either I was following the plan or I had failed. There was no in-between. I was either on course or hopelessly lost somewhere over the Atlantic. If I wandered away from a goal, I would waste even more time feeling bad about it. Then, because I had already “failed,” I might as well quit.

A plane doesn’t turn around every time the wind nudges it off course, or we would never arrive anywhere. The pilot notices, adjusts and continues.

Once I understood that, I stopped expecting myself to follow a perfectly straight path. I could allow for diversions without abandoning the destination. Life with children guaranteed that wind and storms would happen. Sometimes I could go around the turbulence, and other times I would have to travel directly through.

Neither meant the journey was over.

Recognize: Maintenance Is Not Failure

All month, we have been sharpening our tools.

First, we noticed where creative friction lives. We Recognized that when we are pressing harder than we should have to, the problem may not be laziness, failure or a lack of commitment. Something carrying the work may simply need attention.

Then we looked at what those tools had already created. We Reimagined our existing stories, poems, books, classes, research and ideas as possibilities that may not have finished becoming yet.

Last week, we Built our discernment. We examined the difference between information and judgment and created a checklist for questioning what our tools tell us before deciding what that information means. A tool can inform our choices, but it cannot relieve us of the responsibility to think, interpret and decide for ourselves.

Now we reach Become.

This is the point where we discover that sharpening our tools was never a one-time project. We don’t hone the scissors once and expect them to stay perfect. The workshop will become messy again. The beautifully organized folder will eventually contain a document called FINAL-FINAL-THIS-ONE-REALLY-FINAL-3-PLEASE.

That does not mean the system failed, but that we are using it.

Reimagine: Staying on Course Is an Active Practice

We tend to imagine transformation as a dramatic dividing line.

Unfortunately, that isn’t how it works. Real transformation is usually less pretty. Becoming the writers we are meant to be doesn’t mean arriving at a permanent state where we never drift again. It is learning to notice when we have drifted and knowing how to return. That changes the meaning of maintenance.

Reviewing our tools doesn’t mean we chose badly. Adjusting a system doesn’t mean we built it incorrectly. Discovering that a platform, schedule or process no longer serves us doesn’t erase the work it once helped us accomplish. We are not machines executing a perfect flight plan under laboratory conditions.

We are creative people moving through life’s weather.

Deadlines change. Our bodies get tired. Our families need us. Platforms can alter their policies. New opportunities can appear, causing us to change course. Projects grow in directions we did not anticipate. Sometimes a storm blows directly across the route we carefully planned.

The question is not how we can avoid ever veering off course. We will. The question is whether we can recognize it without turning the correction into a moral crisis.

Build: Create a Way to Return

A sustainable creative practice needs more than a destination. It needs a way to check where we are. Lucky for us, that doesn’t require an elaborate dashboard capable of getting us from New York to Paris. It might be one regular question:

Is the way I am working still helping me reach the place I want to go?

I am a fan of set it and forget it. I have appointments set up on my calendar to remind me to check in with myself weekly, monthly and quarterly. I keep notes in the description field with my wins, reminders and goals.

I have alarms set up on my phone to remind me to take care of myself physically so I will be at my best at my desk. Drink water, eat meals, get some exercise… These are all daily reminders. If I miss them, I don’t see it as a failure anymore.

I didn’t work out yesterday because my daughter was nearby so we met up for coffee. Old me would have twisted it into failure. Current me has learned that I get another chance tomorrow, and I can simply be happy that we had an afternoon to chat.

A check-in gives us an opportunity to make one small correction before frustration becomes abandonment. We don’t need to reorganize our entire creative lives every time something slips. We can update the spreadsheet, move the deadline, and ask for extra time. We can ask for help. We can take a break to rest and recharge.

Then we continue.

Become: Tend What You Make

Becoming a writer is not something we have to earn or announce.

It shows up in our habits. It becomes obvious when we believe our work has value and begin keeping track of where it goes. It shows up to everyone when we see possibility in an old story and want to know whether its rights are available. Creators who value their attention become more careful about what is allowed to claim it. Writers who understand their own limits build room for rest, disruption and weather.

A creator with a destination can take a detour without mistaking it for defeat.

That is stewardship. We are no longer only making things. We are tending what we make and helping it continue to grow.

Tending means paying attention and making adjustments while they are still small. It means caring for the work, the tools and the person using them.

The workshop will not remain perfect. It shouldn’t. Creating can be a chaotic mess. Ours will accumulate scraps, experiments, abandoned plans, contracts, coffee cups and six increasingly final versions of the same manuscript. The tools will need sharpening again because we are using them to build something.

When that happens, we do not have to declare ourselves failures. We can notice, adjust and continue. The goal was never to remain perfectly on course. The goal is to develop the staying power to keep returning to it.

We’re continuing this conversation in the free Authortunities community so we can share what we’ve learned along the way. Come join us! Just say Angela sent you.

What small course correction has helped you the most in your writing career?

JOIN THE PRIVATE COMMUNITY CONVERSATION

…or leave a comment on Substack, or both!

I’m creating a planner for writers for 2027. An extension of the Authortunities Almanac calendar, it will combine deadlines and events with the written guidance for a yearlong creative cohort. I’ve been shaping my recent posts so the ideas can flow naturally between Substack, the planner and our workshops. I’d love to know how the Recognize · Reimagine · Build · Become framework is working for you.

News from the Authortunities Ecosystem

📅· The Authortunities Calendar is updated!

🎙️· This week on Reading Space & Time, we will be sharing the final stories and poems from the August issue No. 153, namely “My old pen” by Simbarashe Chirikure, “Just Tell Me No” by Blake Jessop, “Sharpen Your Tools” by Saroj Kumar Senapati, “Bravo Checkpoint” by P. M. Alexander and “City of Diamonds” by Hallie Rae.

🛠️· Join the conversation about this week’s post in the free Authortunities NeighborHub at authortunitieshub.com.

🔥 · The Day He Discovered the Color of Rain · Stephen Scheuerman In this luminous, searching collection about nature, memory, love, loss, identity, and the beauty of being alive, Scheuerman looks closely at the world, but beneath those observations runs another landscape that includes childhood and family, desire and belonging, political awakening, survival, grief, and the devastating losses of the AIDS epidemic. Completed over the course of a lifetime and published posthumously, this collection is both an artistic legacy and an invitation: to slow down, look more closely, and rediscover the extraordinary within the ordinary. From Authortunities Press: https://authortunitiespress.com/b/the-day-he-discovered-the-color-of-rain

AUTHORTUNITIES · ISSUE 181 · AUGUST 2026
Recognize · Reimagine · Build · Become
Calendar · NeighborHub Community · Space & Time · Reading Space & Time Authortunities Almanac 2027 · Authortunities Press

THIS WEEK: BECOME

Get more from Angela Yuriko Smith in the Substack app

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I get the complaint. Editors already have overflowing submission queues and nobody wants to spend hours reading mass-produced stories someone generated and sprayed across a hundred markets. We are writers ourselves, and have spent our best years hunched over our computers to hone our craft. We have paid for the privilege with missed social lives, sweat and many, many tears.

In spite of what you may have heard, I am not, and have never been, supportive of AI-generated creative work. I am more mystified by why anyone who wants to be a writer would bother. Is it for the pittance or the pride? There doesn’t seem to be much of either in it.

For context, in 2023 Space & Time published an experimental AI Discovery Issue exploring how writers and artists were actually using these new tools. It was controversial then, and I still think the best response to controversy is examination rather than hearsay. So I’m making the ebook edition of Issue No. 144 free for anyone who wants to read the experiment and make up their own mind. Use code C4URSELF for 100% off: https://authortunitiespress.com/b/eb-144

What is sending cold shivers down my spine is when I ask how they knew for sure it was AI-gen: The detector caught them.

I don’t think the publishers reporting this problem are lying and I am not going to claim AI detectors are useless. Every publication is within their rights to protect themselves from AI or any other kind of spam.

The question burning in my mind is much simpler.

What, exactly, did the tool establish?

And maybe more importantly:

What are we justified in doing with that information?

Recognize When Information Starts Feeling Like Judgment

I think there’s a slippery slope here, and it extends far beyond AI detectors. We tend to trust things that give us numbers. We live for scores, percentages, graphs, rankings… many of us spend far too many creative hours deciphering an analytics dashboard. Numbers reassure us.

If a tool tells us a manuscript is 87% something, that feels more substantial than saying, “Something about this manuscript makes me suspicious.”

One sounds like an opinion, but the other sounds like evidence. That can be comforting, but tools shouldn’t eliminate our human discernment. They give us information, but that information still requires us to make the final call.

An AI detector can identify patterns its system associates with generated writing, but it doesn’t automatically tell you what the information means.

That’s our job as humans, and that’s where discernment comes in.

Reimagine Humans as the Decision-Maker

This becomes especially important when the stakes rise. Imagine an editor uses an AI detector as one signal that a manuscript deserves a closer look. Fair enough.

Now imagine the detector’s result becomes the sole reason an author is permanently banned. Those aren’t the same use of the tool. The information hasn’t changed, just the consequence.

To be accused of your story being written by AI is emotionally devastating. It is already hard enough to write a story, silence the imposter and submit it. Artists pull themselves apart to create. To be banned is a serious consequence, and that means the amount of certainty we require ought to change with it.

The greater the consequence, the stronger the evidence should have to be.

This is not an argument against using tools but a plea for using them with discernment. There’s an irony in publishing right now. We’re worried about algorithms replacing human creators, so we need to be very careful that our solution isn’t allowing an algorithm to determine which writers are human.

Build Your Discernment Checklist

This month’s theme is Sharpen Your Tools, and I think discernment may be one of the most important tools we can sharpen. Before I make an important decision based on what a tool tells me, I want to consider five things.

1. Signal

What is the tool actually telling me?

Not what I think it means or what social media is telling me it means… What did it actually measure?

“87% AI” and “this system identified linguistic patterns associated with generated text” are psychologically very different statements. The first feels like a verdict. The second one is inconclusive.

2. Context

What else could reasonably produce this result?

This is the part where we resist the seductive first explanation. Could an editing tool have affected the prose? Could someone’s writing style simply be unusually regular because of neurodivergence or the first language literacy? Could the sample be too small? Could the metric be measuring something adjacent to the thing I actually care about?

Finally, what incentives does the company behind the tool have, and could those incentives influence how it presents risk, certainty, or accuracy?

3. Corroboration

What independent evidence supports the conclusion? One tool agreeing with itself isn’t corroboration. What else do I know? What else can I observe? Do multiple independent pieces of evidence point in the same direction? Have I tested the accuracy with my own work, and other verified human created work?

4. Consequence

What happens if I’m wrong? This is the most important question. A false positive and a false negative don’t necessarily have equal costs, and neither does choosing the wrong headline and accusing someone of dishonesty.

The more serious the consequence, the more carefully I want to examine what I’m relying on.

5. Confidence

Finally: Is the evidence I have strong enough for the action I’m about to take?

If I accuse this person of using AI-gen to create this story, what is the consequence? Am I willing to take that step if this is a false positive? Does my confidence match the consequence?

My personal answer is no. I will not use AI to test if someone’s work is AI so that I can punish them, especially when there are too many false positives.

Become the Writer Who Doesn’t Outsource Judgment

There’s another consequence of AI detection that bothers me even more than false accusations: what happens when writers become so afraid of being accused that they begin adapting their writing for the detectors?

Imagine writing every word of a story yourself, running it through a detector and seeing: LIKELY AI-GENERATED. Even though you wrote this, you might panic.

So you change a sentence. Scan again. Remove the em dashes. Break that beautifully balanced sentence because apparently beautifully balanced sentences are tells of AI-gen now. Eventually the detector might give you a green light. Congratulations. You’ve successfully convinced a machine you’re human.

In the quest for human writing, the writer stopped writing for the reader and started writing for the detector. What happens to literature when we’re so afraid of being mistaken for AI that we start altering human writing to satisfy a machine’s definition of human?

The goal isn’t to let machines think for us. The goal also isn’t to let machines create for us. It’s to let them do the tedious, non-creative tasks so we can do what we are made for: making.

That’s true whether the tool is an AI detector, an editing program, an analytics dashboard, a style guide, a publishing expert, a social platform, or an AI assistant. Useful tools extend our abilities, but they should never replace our responsibility to think for ourselves.

I’m continuing this conversation in the Authortunities community so we can share personal experiences and reimagine what is possible.

What are your thoughts and experiences with AI detectors?

JOIN THE PRIVATE COMMUNITY CONVERSATION

or leave a comment on Substack.

News from the Authortunities Ecosystem

📅· The Authortunities Calendar is updated!

🎙️· This week on Reading Space & Time, we will be sharing two more stories and two more poems from the just released August issue No. 153, namely “My old pen” by Simbarashe Chirikure, “Just Tell Me No” by Blake Jessop, “Sharpen Your Tools” by Saroj Kumar Senapati, “Bravo Checkpoint” by P. M. Alexander and “City of Diamonds” by Hallie Rae.

🛠️· Join the conversation about this week’s post in the free Authortunities NeighborHub at authortunitieshub.com.

🔥 · This week from Authortunities Press: All issues of Space & Time up to No. 111 are now available, including No. 120 Spring 2014, in which Nicky Drayden’s “The Simplest Equation” was selected and performed by LeVar Burton for LeVar Burton Reads in August 2019. Check out the selection of Space & Time magazines available at https://authortunitiespress.com/collection/space-time.

AUTHORTUNITIES · ISSUE 180 · AUGUST 2026
Recognize · Reimagine · Build · Become
Calendar · NeighborHub Community · Space & Time · Reading Space & Time Authortunities Almanac 2027 · Authortunities Press

THIS WEEK: BUILD

Then we discussed two poems and two stories from this month’s issue. This week it was “I never will write a poem” by M. Frost, “A Better Tongue” by Domenico Attianese, “words as weaponry” by Cailín Frankland, and “Working as Intended” by T. H. Mercer.

Next week we will be sharing two more stories and two more poems from the just released August issue No. 153, namely “My old pen” by Simbarashe Chirikure, “Just Tell Me No” by Blake Jessop, “Sharpen Your Tools” by Saroj Kumar Senapati, “Bravo Checkpoint” by P. M. Alexander and “City of Diamonds” by Hallie Rae.

That’s all for Episode 19. We will be back next Monday at 2:30 pm EST. Until then, thank you for Reading Space & Time.

Get more from Angela Yuriko Smith in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

Let’s start with a story about stories. Many of us grew up spending our allowance on collectible hardcover book series. When the first Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries appeared in the late 1920s and early 1930s, they became wildly successful. Generations of readers followed these everyday teens through secret passages, mysterious staircases, missing wills, and suspiciously eventful small towns. Perhaps the biggest mystery of all was the people behind the names on those covers. Carolyn Keene and Franklin W. Dixon never actually existed.

Very few readers realized that the writers creating those early adventures were ghostwriters. They were paid a one-time fee and worked under contracts that gave them no continuing royalties or public authorship credit.

The stories endured, but their creators’ stake in them didn’t.

Mildred Wirt Benson wrote 23 of the first 30 Nancy Drew books as “Carolyn Keene.” Under the Stratemeyer arrangement, she received flat fees and signed away the rights. The University of Iowa archives say she was paid roughly $85–$250 for many of the juvenile novels she produced.

Leslie McFarlane wrote as many as 21 of the original Hardy Boys novels between 1927 and 1946 as “Franklin W. Dixon.” His first Hardy Boys manuscript, The Tower Treasure, brought him a lump sum of $125 rather than an ongoing stake in the franchise.

Both went on to successful careers, but neither retained a continuing stake in the enormously durable cultural properties they helped create.

That story bothers me because I think many creators are taught to think our work has a use-by date. Once we publish something, we tend to think its job is finished. We tend to think of our work one transaction at a time.

We write a story. Someone publishes it. We get paid, hopefully. We celebrate, move on, and make the next thing. We think the story has finished doing its job. But what if it hasn’t?

That is what I want us to Reimagine this week.

A story can hold so much value beyond its original pages. A book can be much more than a book. A poem, essay, workshop, fictional world, character, research project, or creative method may contain possibilities we don’t recognize when we first make it.

One story might later become an audio piece. A book might inspire a workshop. A fictional world might hold several more stories. An essay might become a talk. A character might find a home in another story. Work written for one audience might eventually reach another language, format, or country.

This doesn’t mean every poem needs a merchandise line… though I’d buy poetry mugs. It does mean the thing we create may have a longer and more interesting life than the first opportunity attached to it.

We can see more possibilities when we think of our creative rights as layered rather than singular. A single work can carry separate publication, audio, film and television, translation, merchandise, and other rights. That changes the question.

That feels like a small shift, but it opens an enormous door.

Ownership gives us choices. We can publish something, license it, give it away, adapt it, let someone else adapt it, teach from it, build on it, save it, grant certain rights while keeping others. Managing our rights gives us the freedom to be generous intentionally. We can share work freely when we choose, license it carefully when that makes sense, and preserve other possibilities for later.

The point is not that there is one correct choice. The point is that we understand our rights well enough to make the choice ourselves.

That is where ownership becomes interesting to me. It is not only about protecting what already exists. It is about preserving possibility.

This connects directly to the work we started last week. Creative friction can happen when we keep producing new things because we have forgotten what is already sitting in the workshop.

There may be stories we still love buried in our files; classes we taught once and never revisited; research that could become something larger; essays containing the seed of a book; or books containing the seed of an entire body of work.

We can become so focused on making the next thing that we fail to notice how much possibility is already behind us. Reimagining asks us to turn around, notice what we have already created, and use it to build forward.

This week, here on Substack, we Recognize the assumption that finished work has finished its life. In the NeighborHub, we can Reimagine what else that work might become. Through the 2027 Authortunities Almanac, our yearlong creative planner, we will Build by taking stock of what we already have and the possibilities still open to us. Then we can celebrate the evidence of who we are Becoming.

The Hermit carries a lantern because we cannot reimagine what we can’t see. Last week, we asked which tools had grown dull. This week, let’s look at what those tools have already created. Before we rush off to make something new, let’s ask a different question:

What have we already made that might still be becoming something?

Leave a comment

News from the Authortunities Ecosystem

🔎📅· The Authortunities Calendar is updated!

💭🎙️· This week on Reading Space & Time, we will be sharing two more stories and two more poems from the just released August issue No. 153, namely “I never will write a poem” by M. Frost, “A Better Tongue” by Domenico Attianese, “words as weaponry” by Cailín Frankland, and “Working as Intended” by T. H. Mercer.

🛠️🎂· The Authortunities NeighborHub is turning two! Join us this week as we celebrate two years of our free creative community and continue the conversation sparked by this week’s post at authortunitieshub.com.

🦋5️⃣ · Five new poetry books available this week from Authortunities Press: Spoken Words From the Mirror, Doors of the Heart and Unscripted, all by Mark R. Dougherty. The Body As Haunted by Pixie Bruner and The Lore of Inscrutable Dreams by Colleen Anderson. Check out all the poetry books at authortunitiespress.com/collection/poetry.

AUTHORTUNITIES · ISSUE 179 · AUGUST 2026
Recognize · Reimagine · Build · Become
Calendar · NeighborHub Community · Space & Time · Reading Space & Time Authortunities Almanac 2027 · Authortunities Press

THIS WEEK: REIMAGINE

Then we discussed two poems and two stories from this month’s issue. This week it was “The Ogre” by Kathryn Ptacek, “Pickleblood’s Saga” by Kris Schokrowsky, “Unfiltered” by Brian U. Garrison, and “Enterprise One” by Callum Borthwick.

Next week we will be sharing two more stories and two more poems from the just released August issue No. 153, namely “I never will write a poem” by M. Frost, “A Better Tongue” by Domenico Attianese, “words as weaponry” by Cailín Frankland, and “Working as Intended” by T. H. Mercer.

That’s all for Episode 18. We will be back next Monday at 2:30 pm EST. Until then, thank you for Reading Space & Time.

Get more from Angela Yuriko Smith in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

Thank you so much for being here and for helping support the work we do through Authortunities. Your support has helped this little newsletter grow into something much bigger than I originally imagined, and this month I want to give you an early look at where we’re going next.

Over the last few years, Authortunities has grown from a Substack into an entire creative ecosystem. We now have the Authortunities NeighborHub community, Authortunities Press, Space & Time magazine, workshops, coaching, events, publishing opportunities, and soon the Authortunities Almanac planner.

That growth has been wonderful, but it has also created a problem: our community is scattered across too many places.

I’ve realized that Substack works beautifully as the place where we can share essays, ideas, encouragement, and the stories that help us Recognize the patterns shaping our creative lives. But the deeper work really belongs inside our community. This is where we where we Reimagine, Build, and support each other as we Become who we imagine ourselves to be.

So over the coming months, I’ll be transitioning the paid-member experience into the Authortunities NeighborHub on Mighty Networks.

This means the paid NeighborHub will increasingly become the place for our working sessions, coaching, accountability, templates, tools, planner activities, deeper discussions, and practical implementation.

Most importantly: if you are already supporting Authortunities here through a paid Substack subscription, I am not going to ask you to pay for the same membership twice.

You helped us build this.

When the new structure is ready, current paid Substack members will receive instructions for accessing the paid Authortunities community as part of this transition. There is nothing you need to do yet, and I’ll make sure the process is clear before anything changes.

For now, just stay tuned.

My goal is not to take anything away from Supporting Members. Quite the opposite. I want your membership to give you more opportunity to participate, build, learn, and connect, instead of simply receiving additional posts.

Meanwhile, I’m busy putting books up at Authortunities Press, including all the accessibility editions for Space & Time 153, which includes the ebook, the standard print, the large print and the dyslexia-friendly editions.

Here is your 100% off discount code so you can download your free ebook copy from the store. And as an extra thank-you for being a supporting member, I’m also including a 15% off code good for any order in the store through September 1.

Read more

Last week, I said it was time to go home. That didn’t mean abandoning Substack, pulling everything down, and running screaming toward another platform where I could rebuild the same scattered structure under a different logo. But the shock made me realize I needed to stop confusing everywhere with growth.

The deeper work of Authortunities already had a home in our NeighborHub community. The conversations, workshops, coaching, tools, opportunities, and peer support were already there. The lights were on. The door was open. Once I recognized that, the next question became obvious.

What do we do when we get home?

We tend the place. We walk through our rooms and notice what has accumulated. We see what is scattered, neglected, broken, redundant, or no longer supporting the life we are trying to build. Then we enter the workshop and inspect our tools.

That brings us to our August theme, Sharpen Your Tools, and our Tarot archetype for the month: The Hermit.

The Hermit is often treated as a symbol of solitude and introspection, but this is not withdrawal simply for the sake of being alone. The Hermit steps away from noise to deepen mastery. This is not the Fake Muse telling us to become small in a misguided attempt to protect ourselves.

The Fake Muse tries to convince us to withdraw and hide. The Hermit chooses to withdraw and prepare.

Last week, my Fake Muse wanted me to leave Substack immediately. The advice arrived as a grain of truth wrapped in bubble wrap. Yes, rented platforms can change without our consent. Yes, systems can misread us. Yes, building an entire creative life on someone else’s property makes us vulnerable.

But the Fake Muse took those truths and tried to nudge me directly to panic. The Hermit asks better questions.

What is actually wrong? What needs protection? What should remain? What has become scattered? What deserves our undivided attention?

Creative people rarely suffer from a lack of tools. We have notebooks, apps, courses, templates, platforms, pens, podcasts, and more promising to make the work easier. If anything, we have too many tools.

When something feels difficult, our first impulse is often to add another one. There’s always room (we think) for one more platform or productivity method. Surely we just need another strategy or subscription (that we will absolutely remember to cancel before the free trial ends).

Acquiring something new feels like progress. It gives us a fresh beginning without asking us to examine what has grown dull, neglected, or fragmented. Sometimes we genuinely need a better tool, but we can also get so busy using our tools we forget what we were building in the first place. Other times we can get so busy building something that we forget to maintain the tools we use.

A dull blade can still cut. We just have to press harder, work longer, and accept a messier result.

That’s creative friction. We are still producing, but our computer keeps stalling because we have neglected its updates. We are still submitting, but we no longer know where half our work has gone because we weren’t keeping track. We are still showing up online, but our attention is divided across so many platforms that none of them feels like home.

We are working. We are simply pressing harder than we should have to.

That is what I want us to Recognize this week.

Our creative struggles don’t mean we are failures, lack commitment, or aren’t working hard enough. Sometimes the tools carrying our work simply need attention.

Our culture rewards visible output. We celebrate finished manuscripts, launches, publications, acceptances, announcements, and new projects. We don’t really celebrate the week we spent in our pajamas organizing contracts or improving a system.

Pausing can feel suspiciously like falling behind. The unhelpful belief is that if we are not actively producing, we are not making meaningful progress. So we keep moving for the sake of movement, collecting proof that we were busy without getting any closer to where we meant to go. Refinement is part of the process.

Our tools are more than what we use to put down words on the page. Our craft is a tool. Our attention is a tool. Our confidence, judgment, professional knowledge, audience relationships, and community are all tools. Even rest and nutrition are tools because exhausted creators rarely make their best artistic or professional decisions while hangry.

Each of these can become dull or depleted. Craft becomes dull when we fall into creative ruts and repeat only what we already know. Our attention becomes dull when it is divided among too many demands. Our visibility becomes fragmented when every platform requires a separate version of us. Ownership becomes vulnerability when we sign agreements we don’t understand.

Sharpening begins with noticing where the friction lives.

This week, here on Substack, our work is to Recognize our unhelpful patterns.

In the NeighborHub, we will Reimagine what might become possible if we stopped collecting tools and began mastering the ones already in our hands. When the 2027 Authortunities Almanac planner launches, we can Build that practice together by inventorying what we have, choosing one tool to strengthen, and creating a sustainable way to tend it.

Then we will celebrate the evidence of who we are Becoming.

Becoming may look like a stronger chapter, a cleaner submission system, a contract we finally understand, a price we are no longer ashamed to name, or a platform we consciously release. These changes may look small from the outside, but they will be evidence that we are living and working more intentionally.

The Hermit carries one lantern. It’s not meant to illuminate the entire road. It just gives us enough light for the next deliberate step.

Last week, we chose to come home. This month, we begin tending the workshop inside that home. Before we reach for something new, let’s identify what needs sharpening.

Where are we pressing harder because one of our tools has grown dull?

Leave a comment

🔥 · Space & Time No. 153: August 2026 available in Ebook · Standard Print · Large Print · Dyslexia-Friendly Print!

📅· The Authortunities Calendar is updated!

🎙️· This week on Reading Space & Time, we will be sharing stories and poems from the August issue No. 153, namely namely “The Ogre” by Kathryn Ptacek, “Pickleblood’s Saga” by Kris Schokrowsky, “Unfiltered” by Brian U. Garrison, and “Enterprise One” by Callum Borthwick.

Then we kick off the brand new August issue No. 153, by sharing the opening poems and stories, namely “Paring Down” by Kelly J. Cooper, “The Masterpiece” by Anuksha Dey, “The Vision” by Andrew Brenza, and “Optimization Problem” by Xauri’EL Zwaan.

Next week we will be sharing stories and poems from the officially released August issue No. 153, namely “The Ogre” by Kathryn Ptacek, “Pickleblood’s Saga” by Kris Schokrowsky, “Unfiltered” by Brian U. Garrison, and “Enterprise One” by Callum Borthwick.

That’s all for Episode 17. We will be back next Monday at 2:30 pm EST. Until then, thank you for Reading Space & Time.

Get more from Angela Yuriko Smith in the Substack app

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When I read Substack’s announcement this week about native AI detection, something in me went cold. All month, I’ve been writing about the Fake Muse as fear in a housecoat: the overprotective grandparent who wants to keep us safe by keeping us inside. Perfect timing for my Fake Muse to come back with a new sweater. My first thought was to leave Substack.

I’ll be frank. I object to AI detectors and find them unethical, dangerous, and hypocritical. This is not theoretical for me.

As a neurodivergent person, I am very aware of what happens when systems and societies decide there is one correct way for a human voice to sound. I know what it is to have my patterns, my processing, my intensity, my phrasing, my timing, and my way of moving through the world misunderstood. Long before AI was in the picture, I had one of my publishers ask me if English was my second language because my English was “off.”

If that happened today, he might have put my work through a detector, gotten a false positive, and fired me over it. He probably would have felt justified by his decision, even though the fine print admits these tools are not 100% accurate. False readings already have consequences: students losing scholarships, books being canceled, and authors being review-bombed. Don’t even get me started on the hypocrisy of using AI to “catch” AI.

Tools like this are too easily treated as authority, even when they are not reliable enough to deserve it. False accusations do not fall evenly. Writers who use English as an additional language, neurodivergent writers, disabled writers, experimental writers, and people whose voices do not match expected linguistic patterns are too often the ones asked to prove their humanity.

A tool does not have to be accurate to become a weapon. It only has to produce a result someone already wants to believe. Until they are 100% accurate, I won’t use them.

Substack’s announcement felt like a betrayal and hit me on an emotional level. That was all the invitation my Fake Muse needed.

Take everything down. Abandon the platform. You knew better than to trust rented land.

Honestly, it wasn’t wrong. The Fake Muse is dangerous because it usually brings a grain of truth wrapped in six unnecessary sweaters.

These things are true. That’s what makes the Fake Muse dangerous. It was right about the vulnerability, but not the remedy. The answer is not panic. The answer is to breathe.

I am not leaving Substack.

I can object to a platform decision and still use the parts of the platform that serve my readers. I can stay in conversation with the people who found me here and continue writing public essays that offer something worthwhile.

Substack is not the enemy, but I am still just a guest here.

That was the moment the next chapter of Authortunities became clear. It’s time to go home.

The ecosystem was already here

Authortunities began as a free Substack. Then it grew a free community. Then, somehow, it became a publishing ecosystem. There was no business plan. The original goal was just to offer free coaching to more writers without stretching myself thinner.

I didn’t expect the Substack to become such an important place for essays, opportunities, encouragement, and creative reflection.

I didn’t expect the NeighborHub to become such an active space for open mics, workshops, conversations, collaboration, accountability, and belonging.

I didn’t expect the press to spring up from the work we shared as a community.

I didn’t expect Space & Time to go monthly.

But they did. They developed lives of their own. Meanwhile, I kept adding rooms as I saw the need.

I continued coaching through Reedsy. I kept publishing Space & Time. I started giving books a home under Authortunities Press. I taught in other places. I spoke at events. I said yes to interviews, festivals, partnerships, conversations, experiments, and platforms.

These are all wonderful experiences, but I’ve begun to realize I’m trying to keep too many fires warm in too many separate houses.

The work has grown, but the structure hasn’t grown with it.

In some ways, this is a result of listening to my Fake Muse. It convinced me that to keep growing, I have to keep showing up everywhere. Every platform needs its own content. Every audience needs its own version of me. Every opportunity deserves a yes.

For a while, I mistook that for growth, but now I recognize it as fragmentation. Thanks to Substack’s wake-up call this week, I realize the community is not an extra branch of Authortunities. It’s the center. It’s my home.

That feels ridiculously obvious to me now, but it took me a while to see it. I don’t need to build another separate world on every platform. I need to build one world with many entrances.

What is changing

Over the coming months, I will begin consolidating my deeper teaching, coaching, tools, cohort work, and implementation support inside the already thriving Authortunities community on Mighty Networks. Substack will remain an important part of the ecosystem, but its role will become clearer.

The free Substack will continue helping readers transform through stories, ideas, reframes, and meaningful public essays. These posts will not become empty advertisements with all the useful material stripped out and hidden elsewhere. I still want every public piece to offer something complete and worthwhile.

But the deeper work will go home to live inside the community, including the workshops, working sessions, coaching, resources, accountability, opportunity calendar, and structured annual journey.

Here is how I’m beginning to understand the difference:

Free Substack: Help me see the work, the world, and myself differently.

Free NeighborHub membership: Help me meet other people trying to build a meaningful creative life.

Paid membership: Help me keep showing up, building, revising, submitting, publishing, and becoming.

The free community will remain free. Open conversations, selected events, peer connection, and opportunities to participate will remain part of NeighborHub. The paid community will become the guided working space where inspiration becomes implementation.

A more coherent creative ecosystem

Now that I’ve stopped asking every platform to be a home, I can finally see the architecture of the world I had already been building. The ecosystem now has four connected pillars:

• Recognize with the Guided Cohort Community: We examine the inherited stories and scripts shaping our creative lives.

• Reimagine with Space & Time: The magazine gives us room to explore what else might be possible through fiction, poetry, essays, and art.

• Build with the Authortunities Almanac Planner: Writers carry the tangible part of the community with them as they move through Craft, Credibility, Reach, and Sustainability.

• Become with Authortunities Press: Selected possibilities take physical form as books, intellectual property, professional credits, income opportunities, and artifacts that can travel beyond their makers.

If the community helps us recognize the scripts we inherited, Space & Time helps us imagine beyond them, and the Almanac Planner helps us build from that new vision, then the Press becomes one place where the work can take physical form.

Everything else becomes a doorway leading toward or extending the reach of those four pillars. This includes Substack, social media, Reedsy, public events, speaking, interviews, festivals, and partnerships.

One home with many welcome mats.

What this means for paid subscribers

Those of you who currently support this Substack through a paid subscription helped make this evolution possible. You believed in the work before I could fully see what it was becoming.

I will not ask you to purchase your place in the new structure again. Current paid Substack subscribers will receive access to the paid Authortunities community as part of the transition. I’ll share clear instructions before anyone needs to take action, and no one will be asked to pay twice.

You are not being moved out of something. You are being welcomed further into what you helped build.

Rejecting the myth of everywhere

The Fake Muse tells us that success means being everywhere, but everywhere is not the same as home. Maybe that is why this realization doesn’t feel like retreat so much as return.

My favorite movie is Everything Everywhere All at Once. In the film, Evelyn Wang is an exhausted laundromat owner thrown into a dizzying multiverse where she experiences countless alternate selves. The realities spin faster and faster until possibility itself becomes overwhelming. In the end, she returns to her home with a new vision. Because she has seen everywhere else, she can finally recognize the sacred value of home.

That’s where I am now. Thank you, Substack. It’s been a wonderful party, but I need to go home now. The beautiful thing is, home is not a place I have to return to alone. The Authortunities NeighborHub is already there. The lights are on.

The door is already open.

If you’re already in the Authortunities NeighborHub, I’ll see you there as this next chapter takes shape. If you haven’t joined yet, this is a good time to step inside. The free community will remain free, and you can join us at authortunitieshub.com.

And if this post stirred something for you, tell me in the comments: where has your Fake Muse been telling you to flee when what you really need is a stronger home?

Leave a comment

🔥 · Check out the kidlit books now available at Authortunities Press, including the new Ultovo series by Luiz Fernando Peters.

📅· The Authortunities Calendar is updated! Just added, bookfairs and conventions.

🎙️· This week on Reading Space & Time, we will be sharing stories and poems from the brand new August issue No. 153, namely “Paring Down” by Kelly J. Cooper, “The Masterpiece” by Anuksha Dey, “The Vision” by Andrew Brenza, and “Optimization Problem” by Xauri’EL Zwaan.

Then we wrap up the the July issue with our thoughts on story and poems from No. 152, namely “The Pleasure Models” by Pixie Bruner, “A Supremacist Sonnet” by Gordon Linzner, “The Artist” by L. Marie Wood, “The Violinist” by Grace R. Reynolds, and “Man’s Best Friend Mourns” by Jordan Francis.

Next week we will be sharing stories and poems from the brand new August issue No. 153, namely “Paring Down” by Kelly J. Cooper, “The Masterpiece” by Anuksha Dey, “The Vision” by Andrew Brenza, and “Optimization Problem” by Xauri’EL Zwaan.

That’s all for Episode 16. We will be back next Monday at 2:30 pm EST. Until then, thank you for Reading Space & Time.

Have you read any of these? Share your thoughts!

Leave a comment

Get more from Angela Yuriko Smith in the Substack app

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Yesterday, I gave a presentation for Reedsy. When I first agreed to do it, I felt excited. I love talking to writers. I love helping people understand what editors are actually looking for, what makes a manuscript easier to accept, and how writers can revise with more confidence instead of more shame.

Then I found out there were over 3,000 signups. That was when the imposter shadow stepped into the room with me, whispering, Are you sure you’re the person who should be doing this?

I was still fine, technically. Nervous, but fine.

Most people won’t actually show up, I told myself.

Then, during the presentation, I glanced at the attendee list.

More than 500 people were there at that moment, listening live. Five hundred-plus writers had chosen to spend that hour listening to me talk about manuscripts, each with their own questions, hopes, nerves, and expectations.

I had five hundred chances to be helpful. Or, if I let the fake muse take over, five hundred-plus chances to fail.

And then, because the universe has a sense of humor, there was a tech fail. I was booted out in the middle of my own presentation. Nothing like disappearing from a live event to make your imposter shadow wake up.

I got back in. I continued. I found my place again. Then it happened a second time. That was the moment the fake muse leaned in close with advice.

Honey, just pretend you can’t get back in. They’ll just think your internet is down.

At that moment, it sounded like a really good idea.

There it was: the old story. Fear means stop. Fear means danger. Fear means I have wandered too far out of my depth and should retreat before everyone notices.

That story has followed me into almost every new thing I have ever done. Every book, every stage, every submission, every moment when the room got bigger than I expected. Creative fear always shows up at the threshold.

For a long time, I thought fear was trying to stop me because it knew something I didn’t. Now I understand fear differently.

Fear isn’t necessarily trying to harm us. It’s trying to protect us.

It is just wildly overprotective.

Fear is the grandparent of the nervous system, standing at the door with three extra sweaters, a flashlight, expired cough drops, and a handwritten list of every possible thing that could go wrong.

Helpful, honestly. Thank you, fear.

But sometimes it’s really not helpful.

Fear can also appear right before we are ready to spread our wings. It shows up between the aha and the now-what. It pops up right when we stop imagining the work and start letting it meet the world.

That is where the fake muse waits, or maybe that is where it reveals herself.

Maybe it was never a sleek villain in the corner after all. Maybe the fake muse is fear in a housecoat, trying to smother us in sweaters every time we step into sunlight.

It means well. Sort of.

It remembers every time we were embarrassed, rejected, ignored, misunderstood, or made to feel foolish. It has kept receipts and laminated them. It would very much like us to stay inside where nothing bad can happen to us.

The trouble is, nothing good happens to us there either.

Fear wraps us in bubble wrap and calls it love. The fake muse pulls the tape tighter and calls it wisdom. That was what I witnessed yesterday.

The fake muse wanted to make the room about my worth, my authority, my performance, and my possible humiliation. She wanted me to forget the writers who had shown up hoping to learn something useful. She wanted me to confuse visibility with danger.

I had a choice then.

I could feed the panic, or I could return to the work. I had to remember I wasn’t there to prove I deserved to be there. I was there to share what I knew. The presentation was not actually about me. It was about the writers, their manuscripts, their questions, and the stories they were trying to bring into the world. That was my shaky logic in a panicked moment, but it was enough.

I came back in. I picked up where I left off and kept going. I put my over-protective muse in its place.

It is rarely a grand, heroic act. There is no permanent banishment of fear, no perfect triumph where we never doubt ourselves again. It is the practice of returning, imperfectly. I didn’t refuse the feeling of fear. I refused the feeding of it.

That distinction matters.

Fear will always be with us. It has a purpose. It keeps us from touching hot stoves, ignoring red flags, and wandering into dark alleys allegedly full of kittens.

We don’t need to vanquish fear. We just need to stop letting it run the meeting.

Fear can sit in the back, muttering into its little paper cup of bad coffee and scribbling a running list of every possible disaster. Fear doesn’t get the microphone. It doesn’t get to drive, and it doesn’t get to decide whether the work is worthy of being done.

The ritual of refusal.

First, we name the fear.

Yesterday, my fear began with the numbers. Over 3,000 signups. 3,200, to be exact. Then five hundred-plus people live. Then tech fail number one. Then tech fail number two.

Then the old voice saying, You are embarrassing yourself in front of hundreds of people. Once I named it, the fear got smaller. Not gone, just smaller.

Fear was trying to protect me from humiliation. It warned me that I might make a mistake and embarrass myself. It might have been right. I know we say we might die of embarrassment, but has it ever proven fatal?

For me, not yet.

Then, we refuse to be smothered.

This is the part where we remove fear’s power. We don’t need to vanquish it or pretend we don’t see it. We remove fear’s power by recognizing it for what it is: an overprotective grandparent trying to dress us for a blizzard when we are only trying to get the mail.

We can say, Thank you for trying to protect me. Then we can take off six of the sweaters.

Yesterday, I had to refuse to turn five hundred people and a double tech fail into an insurmountable obstacle. I had to refuse to treat a tech fail as a prophecy. I had to refuse to make fear the center of the room.

It wasn’t dramatic or elegant. I stumbled around trying to remember where I was, and then I continued. That was enough.

Finally, we return to the work.

This is the part that matters most. Refusal is not the destination. Refusal only clears the path so we can continue.

The true danger is usually smaller and less dramatic than the fake muse wants us to believe. A little embarrassment is survivable. We can’t write our epic life story without spilling some ink.

Yesterday, I did not defeat my fake muse forever. I did something more useful.

I recognized her.
I refused to let her lead.
I returned to the work.

Then I brought the whole messy experience back here and transmuted it into this post.

That is the ritual.

The goal is not to kill fear. The goal is to stop letting fear dress us for a blizzard every time we step into the sunlight.

What kind of housecoat does your fake muse wear?

Leave a comment

🔥 · Authortunities Press just released Poems to be Afraid Of by Pixie Bruner.

📅 · The Authortunities Calendar is updated with fresh, new ‘always open’ listings.

😅 · Watch Common Manuscript Mistakes and How to Fix Them | Reedsy Live.

🎙️· This week on Reading Space & Time, we will be sharing more stories and poems from the July issue, namely “The Pleasure Models” by Pixie Bruner, “A Supremacist Sonnet” by Gordon Linzner, “The Artist” by L. Marie Wood, “The Violinist” by Grace R. Reynolds, and “Man’s Best Friend Mourns” by Jordan Francis.

We also share our thoughts on story and poems from the current issue No. 152, namely “Cas9” by Geisa Fernandes, “I’m Proud of You” by Jamal Hodge, “Finding the Path” by Miguel O. Mitchell, and “I Dream of Black Quantum Futures” by Maurice Broaddus.

Next week we will be sharing more stories and poems from the July issue, namely “The Pleasure Models” by , “A Supremacist Sonnet” by Gordon Linzner, “The Artist” by L. Marie Wood, “The Violinist” by Grace R. Reynolds, and “Man’s Best Friend Mourns” by Jordan Francis.

That’s all for now. We will be back next Monday at 2:30 pm EST. Until then, thank you for reading Space & Time.

Have you read any of these? Share your thoughts!

Leave a comment

Get more from Angela Yuriko Smith in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

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When I was a teenager, it was considered in vogue to carry around a copy of Seventeen magazine (we were too young for Vogue) and wait to “be discovered” by a talent scout. By the time I was in my twenties, the jig was up. I had realized two valuable things: being discovered is a lot of hard work, and I’d rather be a superauthor than a supermodel. So I went to work for the newspapers.

By 2020, when author events shifted online, I discovered something uncomfortable about myself: I could write books, publish books, edit books, advocate for other writers, teach, mentor, organize, and talk passionately for an hour about the importance of creativity… but the moment someone asked me to introduce myself, I wanted to crawl under my desk and have my mail forwarded there.

Every online event seemed to begin the same way. A grid of faces appeared, and everyone smiled politely. Someone welcomed us. Then came the sentence I dreaded:

“Let’s go around and introduce ourselves.”

I kept my hands off camera so no one would see the nervous tremors start.

My turn would approach like a slow-moving doom cloud. I would sit there rehearsing my own name, which only made me more nervous. Then, when the spotlight finally landed on me, I would do everything possible to step out of it.

Then I would toss the attention to another author as quickly as possible, grateful to escape my own accomplishments.

I told myself I was being humble so I’d feel better about it. No one likes the person who enters a room wearing a crown made of their own press clippings, right? No one wants to sound arrogant, pushy, or self-important, I would tell my disappointed reflection. Looking back, however, I can see what was really happening.

The fake muse had made a bargain with my fear, and it went something like this:

That is the bargain of staying small.

It sounds like protection, humility, and good manners. It sounds like the safe, sensible choice in a world where confidence can be mislabeled as ego and marketing can feel like trying to sell snake oil to healthy people.

The fake muse likes to tell us that hiding is humility, silence is dignity, and visibility is vanity. She tries to convince us that wanting readers is embarrassing. She whispers that if the work were good enough, people would somehow find it without us ever having to open the door.

If we think about that, really think about it, we can see the logic flaw. For this to be true, readers would all need to be psychic, with book recommendations beamed directly into their brains from the magic book faeries.

We all know what to do when we need something. Need a mechanic, banking, a bathtub, or a BLT? We look for signs, ads, reviews, and recommendations.

The same is true for our books. We can believe in book faeries, but our books will likely gather dust while we wait to be discovered by them. Unlike the mythological talent scouts of the ’80s, there are actual hordes of ravenous readers looking for books to devour. They usually reach for the books placed in front of them. The authors who seem to be “accidentally” discovered are often practicing visibility.

I used to think selling myself meant selling out.

I was wrong.

That belief was one of my fake muse’s favorite disguises. It allowed me to pretend I was protecting the purity of the work when I was really protecting myself from the discomfort of being seen.

Marketing felt scammy to me because I associated it with manipulation. I pictured someone trying to sell water to mermaids, shouting into strangers’ faces about something they did not need. I thought promotion meant becoming louder, slicker, shinier, less myself.

Of course I resisted that. I wanted to be authentic.

In truth, ethical marketing is not about tricking people into wanting something useless. It is helping the right people find something they may genuinely need, enjoy, learn from, or be changed by.

Readers need books.
Writers have books.

So where is the problem?

A book unread is not morally superior to a book shared. A poem hidden is not purer than a poem offered. A service no one can find is not more ethical than a service clearly named, fairly priced, and honestly described.

Hiding the work does not protect the work. It imprisons it.

Imagine baking a beautiful cherry pie, setting it on the windowsill, smelling the cinnamon and butter, admiring the golden crust, knowing there are hungry people nearby who would love a slice, and then deciding the humble thing to do is hide it in the back room. We would never call that virtue. We would call it waste.

The problem is not that creators want their work to be read, heard, purchased, shared, or remembered. The problem is when we are taught to feel ashamed of wanting those things. We are allowed to love the making, but not the wanting. We are allowed to labor, but not to ask. We are allowed to create, but not to stand beside the creation and say, clearly, “I made this for someone like you.”

Standing there as ourselves, sharing what we have made, is simpler than we think. It gets awkward when we try to do it as the person we think we should be. We know our readers. They are usually similar to us. Copying someone else’s marketing tactics is like hiking in stilettos or clubbing in hiking boots. We might think we are bad at marketing when the real problem is that we are trying to move through the world in a shape that was never designed for us.

Some people are wonderful on video. Some are brilliant in long essays. Some build community through conversation. Some teach, joke, host, design, correspond, or shine one-on-one. Some are magnetic in person. Some are most themselves on the page. All of these approaches are valid when they fit.

Aligned visibility should feel like an extension of the creative self, not a costume that cuts off circulation.

This does not mean it will always feel easy. Sharing work can still be vulnerable. Pricing your work can still bring up old stories about worth. Announcing good news can still feel like standing in a bright room with no place to hide. That doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong.

Art is not a safe word. Discomfort is how growth feels.

The fake muse asks you to put your creativity away with the fine china, wrapped in bubble wrap and brought out only on special occasions.

The real muse asks you to put it to daily use. Let it be chipped, broken, and worn. Repair it with a little kintsugi, or mosaic the shards into a tabletop and eat on paper plates.

This week, I invite you to break the bargain of staying small, not by changing who you are or gaming the system, but by making the work visible in a way that feels true. Take that glorious, messy, wonderful cherry pie you made and slap it on the windowsill where the hungry readers can catch the scent.

Start in the comments here. I happen to be hungry.

Leave a comment

📅 · The Authortunities Calendar has been updated.

🔥 · Authortunities Press released Space & Time back issues this week, edited by Hildy Silverman and No. 99: 2005 Spring, the final issue edited by Gordon Linzner.

🎙️· This week on Reading Space & Time, we will be sharing more stories and poems from the July issue, namely “Cas9” by Geisa Fernandes, “I’m Proud of You” by Jamal Hodge, “Finding the Path” by Miguel O. Mitchell, and “I Dream of Black Quantum Futures” by Maurice Broaddus.

Then we share our thoughts on the story and poems we are sharing this week: “Raid on Rockfall” by Lixin Foo, “The Fall of King Shedim” by Maxwell I. Gold, “Floating Shift” by Mark Leslie, and “To the Unmasked Self” by Michael Bailey.

Next week we will be sharing more stories and poems from the July issue, namely “Cas9” by Geisa Fernandes, “I’m Proud of You” by Jamal Hodge, “Finding the Path” by Miguel O. Mitchell, and “I Dream of Black Quantum Futures” by Maurice Broaddus.

That’s all for now. We will be back next Monday at 2:33 pm EST. Until then, thank you for reading Space & Time.

Have you read any of these? Share your thoughts!

Leave a comment

Get more from Angela Yuriko Smith in the Substack app

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A few years ago, I had the privilege of working at my local library. To me, libraries have always been sanctuaries of intellectual freedom. They are the safe havens I have relied on again and again in my life, the keepers of magical realms: Oz, Hobbiton, Narnia, Earthsea, Discworld, Pern, Lankhmar, and every strange little world we find when we need a door out of our own.

To actually work in a library and have people refer to me as “a librarian” was a dream job. It was also the closest I had ever come to quitting as a writer.

Cue the existential crisis.

It was the first days of COVID, and the library was only open for the drive-thru window and curbside service. Because we weren’t letting patrons peruse the stacks in person, we kept the main lights off. It was my break, and I had gone off to explore the rows of books, feeling extremely privileged to have all this to myself.

The lights were dim. The building was quiet. The books waited in their rows, universes cataloged in alphabetical order. Every spine was proof that someone else had found the courage, discipline, delusion, or divine stubbornness to create something and finish what they began.

Most days, that inspired me. That day, for some reason, it almost broke me. Unbidden, a toxic thought chain popped up in my brain like tell-tale bubbles in a swamp.

So many books, I thought. So many books, and this huge library is just a pinprick-sized contribution to the body of words we have created as humans. Who am I to think I can add to this? I am unworthy.

I stood there feeling something inside me go still, as if the air were escaping from my dreams and they were collapsing all around me like sad balloons. I was surrendering.

For one moment, stopping felt noble, humble even. Withdrawing my dreams felt respectful, as if the right thing to do in the presence of so many books was to bow my head, back away, and leave the making of literature to better writers.

This false humility is one of the fake muse’s most convincing disguises.

You may have heard the whispers too. Look how much has already been written! Look how many voices are already on the shelf. Look how many people have said this better, sooner, louder, prettier, smarter, stranger, cleaner, braver. Who are you to add one more book? Who are you to take up space? The fake muse can make self-erasure feel like wisdom, but there is a difference between humility and letting your creative dreams fade.

Standing in that darkened library, surrounded by thousands of books, I almost forgot something essential: every book in that building was proof that someone, somewhere, had once looked at the massive cosmos of human language and decided to add one more voice anyway. The library was not telling me there was no room. It was showing me the path, shelf by shelf, spine by spine.

The fake muse is very good at twisting abundance into accusation. It can turn a room full of books into proof that the world doesn’t need one more. It can turn another writer’s success into evidence of your failure. It can turn admiration into paralysis. This is how awe curdles in our bellies and smothers the fire there.

Awe is supposed to open us. It reminds us that we are part of something vast and ancient and alive. Awe is what we feel when we stand under the night sky, read a sentence that splits us open, hear a song that reminds us that we have a voice, or walk between shelves of books and realize how much humanity has dreamed, feared, loved, lost, survived, and imagined.

Awe should make us more alive, but under the influence of the fake muse, awe becomes comparison.

That is the fake muse. It doesn’t always tell us we are terrible. That would be too obvious. Instead, it tells us we are almost ready… but not quite yet.

It keeps us in a permanent waiting room, holding our manuscript in our lap, hoping someone official will walk in and tell us we may proceed. Maybe we should research more, or rebrand first, or study the market, or take another course. Maybe we should reorganize our notes, redesign the website, change the title, check the rankings, refresh the feed, read one more book about how to write the book, and spend another year preparing to become the person we already are.

That day in the library, I was having an existential crisis. I had assumed that with so many books there would be no room for me on the shelf.

I needed to remember that creativity is not a single chair at a crowded table. It isn’t a scarcity economy where every book diminishes the need for another. Art doesn’t work that way.

No one has your exact wound. No one has your exact rhythm, memory, hunger, humor, grief, vocabulary, tenderness, fury, faith, doubt, or strange collection of obsessions. No one else can make the thing that comes from your particular collision with the world.

It does mean your voice is not invalidated by the existence of other voices. It means the shelves are never too full to welcome one more. That was the lie I had to reject in the library: that abundance meant I was unnecessary.

The fake muse wanted me to look at all those books and feel defeated. The real muse asked me to look again and see that every shelf is an invitation. Every book that exists is proof that someone else survived the question: Who am I to add to this? And then they added to it.

So this week, if the fake muse is whispering that the world already has enough books, enough poems, enough paintings, enough songs, enough essays, enough strange little projects, enough people with something to say, I invite you to answer differently.

Tell your fake muse that the shelves are not too full any more than the sky is too full of stars. You are not required to justify your place in the creative cosmos before you begin. You begin, and the work becomes your place.

The fake muse asks, “Do you really think there is room for one more?”
The real muse answers, “Yes, there is always room, and more.”

This Week in the Ecosystem

📅 · The Authortunities Calendar has been updated.

🔥 · Authortunities Press released three new books this week, including The Poetry Workbook for Kids by Kyra Starr.

🎙️· This week on Reading Space & Time, we will share more stories and poems from our July issue. This week we will feature “Raid on Rockfall” by Lixin Foo, “The Fall of King Shedim” by Maxwell I. Gold, “Floating Shift” by Mark Leslie, and “To the Unmasked Self” by Michael Bailey.

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We have so many new books up at Authortunities Press, including all the accessibility editions for Space & Time 152 are now available there, which includes the ebook, the standard print, the large print and the dyslexia-friendly editions.

Because posts with large downloads don’t always get delivered properly, we no longer attach the issue directly to our posts. Instead, I’m including a 100% off discount code so you can download your free ebook copy from the store. And as an extra thank-you for being a supporting member, I’m also including a 15% off code good for anything in the store through August 1.

Space & Time No. 152: July 2026 — Reject Fake Muse here: https://authortunitiespress.com/b/152

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Then we share our thoughts one the story and poems we are sharing this week: “Milking” by Lee Murray, “Ever Changing Landscape” by Olivia Sailor, “Caution When Hunting Unicorns” by Jamal Hodge, and “A Ravenous Cloud” by John Shirley.

Next week we will be sharing more stories and poems from the July issue, namely “Raid on Rockfall” by Lixin Foo, “The Fall of King Shedim” by Maxwell I. Gold, “Floating Shift” by Mark Leslie, and “To the Unmasked Self” by Michael Bailey.

That’s all for now. We will be back next Monday at 2:33 pm EST. Until then, thank you for reading Space & Time.

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The beginning of July means we have a new theme: Reject Fake Muse. Today we are naming the false voices that pull us away from our work and call it wisdom, safety, or care. In other news, Space & Time No. 153 is on pre-order and submissions are open for the September issue.

I was in second grade when I met my first fake muse.

It was Career Day, and the assignment was simple: draw a picture of what you wanted to be when you grew up. I already knew. I grabbed a crayon and drew a woman in an ankle-length dress. She carried an oversized pencil like a battering ram. Underneath it I wrote “writer.”

Next to me, my friend Dixon drew an astronaut. We congratulated each other on our excellent career choices. Then Mrs. Cole came up behind us.

“Astronaut. Very nice, Dixon,” she said. Then she looked at my drawing.

“Angie, pick something else. You don’t want to be a writer. Writers starve and it isn’t a real job. Draw something else or take a C.”

I took the C.

I knew she was wrong. I didn’t have the language for it yet, but I understood something important: warning us away from our dreams is fear masquerading as wisdom. Fake muses aren’t always trying to crush hope. Sometimes they are only repeating the limits that were handed to them, the limits they swallowed until those limits felt like truth. In their subconscious, somewhere, is a bitter acceptance of reality as a compromise between what they want and what they had to settle for.

That is how a fake muse begins.

A fake muse rarely arrives looking false. It doesn’t kick down the door with horns, smoke, and a pitchfork. It usually sounds concerned, practical… protective, even. It tells us to be realistic. It tells us not to strive too hard. It tells us to put the work down for one more night, then another, then another. It tells us we are too tired, too busy, too late, too old, too young, too broken, too ordinary, too much, not enough. It tells us gilded lies.

The fake muse is not inspiration. It’s interruption dressed as guidance and depletion disguised as devotion. It’s the voice that separates us from our own voice and then praises us for being restrained.

This July, the theme for Space & Time is Reject Fake Muse, anchored by Kyra Starr’s cover inspired by The Devil card in tarot. The Devil is not simply a symbol of evil. It is bondage. Obsession. Unhealthy attachment. Shame. Manipulation. The trap we can see clearly from the outside but struggle to name once we are standing inside it.

The face on the cover is left unfinished because the viewer is meant to complete it. We all see a different devil. We all have a different fake muse.

For some of us, the fake muse is distraction. The endless doom scroll, the outrage cycle, the perceived emergency. It’s the shiny new idea that appears every time an old one needs to be finished. It’s that research rabbit hole that feels productive while the actual page remains blank.

For some of us, the fake muse is approval. We begin measuring our worth by applause, numbers, reviews, invitations, comments, and the likes of strangers. We tell ourselves we are “building community” when we are really obsessively refreshing to see if we still have permission to be here.

For some of us, the fake muse is perfectionism. It promises excellence but delivers paralysis. It tells us that we are protecting the integrity of our work with our patient delays. It tells us the next draft will finally make us safe from criticism, misunderstanding, rejection, mockery, or indifference.

For some of us, the fake muse is another person’s voice that moved in so long ago we start believing it’s our own.

The purpose of naming the fake muse is not to stay trapped in the story. The purpose is to see it for what it is. Recognition is the first break in the chain.

A real muse challenges us. She might wake us at inconvenient hours. She will ask us to be brave, disciplined, honest, and devoted to our vision. She can challenge us to tell the truth before we feel ready. She doesn’t isolate us from what inspires us. She doesn’t make us feel guilty for having boundaries.

This is why the fake muse can be so sneaky. It’s attracted to the restless dissatisfaction that nudges us to make something. It addresses the ache and offers us something easier than the blank page. The fake muse is a snake-oil seller of solutions. It offers us drama instead of discipline, novelty instead of completion, applause instead of purpose, numbness instead of rest. For a while, that feels good.

It’s never too late to reclaim our creativity. That is the hopeful part. The fake muse can distract us, but it can’t own us. The chain may be real, but so is the key.

So this month, I am asking us to look directly at the unfinished face on the cover and complete it honestly. Name your fake muse. List the lies it has told you.

Mrs. Cole told me writers starve. She was wrong. Not writing is what starved me.

This July, we reject our counterfeit muses. We stop handing our pens to fear, distraction, guilt, perfectionism, false urgency, and other people’s unfinished devils.

We name the thing that has been feeding on us. We pick up our pens.

We reject our fake muse.

This Week in the Ecosystem

📅 · The Authortunities Calendar has been updated.

📢· Space & Time Magazine/Authortunities Press has been approved for fiscal sponsorship through Fractured Atlas, a nonprofit arts service organization. This opens the door for grant support and future tax-deductible giving toward our literary arts work. We are deeply grateful for this next step and excited for what it makes possible.

🔥 · Pre-order Space & Time 152 in ebook, standard print, large print, or dyslexia-friendly print.

🎙️· This week on Reading Space & Time, we begin sharing the stories and poems from our July issue, featuring “Milking” by Lee Murray, “Ever Changing Landscape” by Olivia Sailor, “Caution When Hunting Unicorns” by Jamal Hodge, and “A Ravenous Cloud” by John Shirley.

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Then we share our thoughts one the story and poems we are sharing this week: “Department of Magical Irrelevance” by Micha Rogers, “Sooner or Later” by Kendall Evans, “Walk While You Have The Light” by Preston Ham, “In the Sun” by Josh Pearce and “Angel Star” by A J Dalton.

That wraps up June. Next week we will be sharing the stories and poems in the July issue, starting off with “Milking” by Lee Murray, “Ever Changing Landscape” by Olivia Sailor, “Caution When Hunting Unicorns” by Jamal Hodge, and “A Ravenous Cloud” by John Shirley.

That’s all for now. We will be back next week. Until then, thank you for reading Space & Time.

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