The Difficulty: Creativity, Meaning & the Hard Work of a Life

<p>Five things that actually moved in publishing this month, and what to do about each. The Authors Guild puts hard numbers on why author income keeps slipping, Audible forces a year-end decision on audiobook royalties, FSG opens a no-fee $15,000 fellowship (deadline July 6), book discovery starts shifting from search to AI, and the indie bookstore "death" turns out to be growth. The channels you don't control are getting harder, so put your weight on the ones you do.Join us at crossroadspublishing.group.</p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://chadprevost.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&#38;utm_campaign=CTA_1">chadprevost.substack.com</a>

<p>How many books on your shelf were actually finished (if they were even began)? This episode is about a different kind of book: short on purpose, beautiful enough to keep, written from the far side of a hard turn for the person standing in it now. A case for concentration over padding, and the first look at Crossings, our new short-form line.</p><p>Find us at crossroadspublishing.group.</p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://chadprevost.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&#38;utm_campaign=CTA_1">chadprevost.substack.com</a>

<p>Homer gives us a woman who weaves a shroud by day and unravels it by night, holding off a house full of suitors. We call it stalling. Homer calls it devotion. This one is for anyone whose truest work looks, from the outside, like waiting: the patient no, the thing left undone on purpose, the refusal to finish on someone else's terms.Find us at https//:www.crossroadspublishing.group.</p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://chadprevost.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&#38;utm_campaign=CTA_1">chadprevost.substack.com</a>

<p>I did an episode a few weeks back on Jasmine Sun’s provocations about independent writing in the AI era. One of those provocations: the value of polish is going down, and the value of personal style, charisma, and weirdness is going up. AI is very good at polished prose. AI is bad at voice—the particular moves only this writer would make, the typos the writer would have caught but didn’t, the metaphor that shouldn’t work but does because it’s coming from this particular mind.</p><p>Sun’s frame and the longhand frame meet exactly here. Voice is the comparative advantage. Voice is what AI cannot generate. And handwriting is one of the most reliable disciplines we have for preserving and developing voice.</p><p>Here’s why. When you type, autocomplete and muscle memory and the smoothness of the keyboard tend to push you toward standard phrasings. The fastest sentence to type is usually the most expected sentence. AI tools accelerate this further by suggesting the most predictable next phrase.</p><p>Even without AI, typing tends to homogenize prose toward the average.</p><p>When you write by hand, none of that exists. There is no autocomplete. There is no suggestion engine. There is only the pen and the next word, and the speed limit is your thinking. The sentence you write is the sentence you composed in your head and chose to put down. The sentence is unmistakably yours because nothing intervened between your mind and the page.</p><p>In the AI era, the handwritten draft is not nostalgic. It is maximally human. It is the most reliable way to produce prose that could not have been generated.Here’s something I’d like you to try. Write your next essay—or a chapter—by hand. Don’t do it for one session. Do it for a few weeks, long enough to get into a flow. See what emerges that doesn’t emerge at the keyboard.</p><p>If you do it, write me back and tell me what you found.</p><p>---</p><p>WHY THIS KEEPS COMING UP</p><p>I’m writing this partly because the original Medium article keeps showing up in my analytics every month, even though I wrote it years ago. Writers are looking for ways to think about the question of HOW THEY WRITE in a moment when the answer is contested. The longhand discipline is one answer that hasn’t gone out of fashion in the lifetimes of the writers I just named, and I don’t think it’s going out of fashion now. If anything, the AI moment makes it more important.</p><p>If you’re working on something and you want a publisher who’ll talk to you about voice and craft and the actual practice of writing—not just the production at the end—Crossroads is that press. Discovery call on the site.</p><p>Twenty minutes, free.</p><p>The difficulty in life is the choice.</p><p>—Chad</p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://chadprevost.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&#38;utm_campaign=CTA_1">chadprevost.substack.com</a>

<p>TL;DRToday we open the doors. Crossroads Publishing Group—a hybrid publisher of serious nonfiction in Chattanooga—announces the Crossroads Commons, our founding membership. Three tiers; fifty lifetime Founder spots, ever.• Join the Commons → crossroadspublishing.group/commons• Publish with us → crossroadspublishing.group/engagements• The catalog → crossroadspublishing.group/catalog• Questions → <a target="_blank" href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a></p><p>Most small presses spend their first year trying to look like a big press. We’re not doing that. A hybrid publisher of serious nonfiction, based in Chattanooga, founded this year, built around the idea that books are occasions for community—and that the press’s job is to take that seriously.The Long StoryA few weeks ago I made a decision about how Crossroads Publishing Group would set itself apart: a real commitment to relationship. Then, on a mountain bike trail a few days ago, the bigger version of the idea arrived. It’s not just relationship—one-on-one, editor and author. It’s <strong>community.</strong> And once you see it, you can’t unsee it: leadership books end at community. Recovery books end at community. Theology, parenting, loneliness, climate—trace the actual argument and the topic turns out to be the doorway in. Community is the thing itself.</p><p>So I’m building the press to take that seriously, not as a marketing line, but as operating structure. Today’s episode lays out the whole thing.</p><p><strong>Five structural commitments:</strong></p><p>* Every Crossroads author gets a direct-purchase URL for their community—their people buy from the press, their royalty is higher, and the relationship stays out of the algorithm.</p><p>* Every book launches with an event in the author’s community, wherever they live.</p><p>* Every Crossroads author appears on The Difficulty.</p><p>* Authors meet each other—the catalog becomes a community of minds, not a list of titles.</p><p>* Readers get a structured way to belong to the press: <strong>the Crossroads Commons, open today.</strong></p><p><strong>The Commons, three tiers:</strong></p><p>* <strong>Reader — $200/year.</strong> Every new title shipped to your door on publication day. A quarterly Circle Letter. 20% off direct orders. Your name in the colophon of every title shipped during your membership year.</p><p>* <strong>Patron — $500/year.</strong> Everything above, plus a signed limited-edition hardcover each year (printed exclusively for Patrons), an invitation to the annual Crossroads gathering, private author Q&As at every launch, and 30% off.</p><p>* <strong>Founder — $1,000, one time, lifetime. Limited to the first 50, ever.</strong> All Patron benefits in perpetuity, your name permanently in the colophon of every title we publish during your lifetime, and one annual meal or coffee with me. When the 50 are filled, that door closes forever.</p><p>The Commons isn’t a subscription to this podcast, The Difficulty stays free, always. It’s membership in the press itself. And you shouldn’t join from obligation or scarcity pressure. Join because the editorial direction and the community we’re forming matter to you, and you want to be part of the early conversation.</p><p><strong>→ </strong><a target="_blank" href="https://crossroadspublishing.group/commons/"><strong>Join the Crossroads Commons</strong></a></p><p><strong>The four doors, if you’re wondering which is yours:</strong></p><p>* <strong>Authors</strong> — from a $750 Legacy Audit to the full Compile to Publish engagement (print + ebook + audiobook, six to eight months): <a target="_blank" href="https://crossroadspublishing.group/engagements/">crossroadspublishing.group/engagements</a></p><p>* <strong>Readers</strong> — the Circle: <a target="_blank" href="https://crossroadspublishing.group/circle/">crossroadspublishing.group/circle</a></p><p>* <strong>Writers developing a manuscript in community</strong> — the First Draft Cohort, applications open July 13, inaugural class begins September 14.</p><p>* <strong>Just want a book?</strong> — <a target="_blank" href="https://crossroadspublishing.group/catalog/">crossroadspublishing.group/catalog</a> — William James’s <em>The Varieties of Religious Experience</em> is in print now; Virginia Woolf’s <em>A Room of One’s Own</em> is next (and I’m narrating the audiobook myself)</p><p>This is your moment to step in.</p><p>—Chad</p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://chadprevost.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&#38;utm_campaign=CTA_1">chadprevost.substack.com</a>