Welcome to The Writing Shed!

Every so often, my wife and I tease each other about putting up a little shed in the back where I can go every morning to write.

Alix figures it would be fine to plop down one of those prefab huts from Home Depot, the kind people use to store Roundup and old rakes. I counter with the excellent point that a proper writer’s retreat needs air conditioning, heat, a couch for contemplation and naps, a mini-fridge, maybe a little porch with a rocking chair. You know, the essentials.

Then we go back to working in our shared office along with her sewing gear and my fishing poles and probably more surge protectors than the county would recommend.

The truth is, after more than 35 years as a working journalist, I can write from pretty much anywhere. I’ve filed stories from the press box at the Super Bowl and the back booth of a Sizzler in Greenwood, South Carolina. I’ve filed from car hoods and phone booths, picnic tables and Navy hangars, Jimmy Buffett shows and presidential debates, and a thousand office chairs of wildly varying quality in a thousand hotel rooms.

For me the writer’s shed has come to mean less of a physical place and more a place in my mind — a spot where I can feel comfortable, try out ideas, and keep my butt in the seat for those rare magic moments when all these strung-together words arrange themselves into something meaningful.

That’s why I picked The Writer’s Shed for the name of my Substack.

In other news: I have a Substack.

I’m extremely lucky to have a couple of outlets for my work already. I work with a bunch of amazing folks at WFAE, the NPR station in Charlotte — I have a podcast called SOUTHBOUND and also do weekly commentaries. The good people at Simon & Schuster published my memoir THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM in 2019, and they’re also on board for my upcoming book on the Westminster Dog Show.

But sometimes I have ideas that don’t fit into those places, things I want to write when the moment strikes, small projects that might turn into big ones. I also want to take you behind the scenes of some of the things I’m working on — to give you a glimpse of how I work — because I love seeing how other people do their thing.

I realize, when it comes to Substack, that I’m asking you to buy a ticket for a cruise that is already overcrowded. Your inbox is probably clogged as it is. And you’ve probably been asked multiple times to subscribe to the Substacks of some of your favorite writers and thinkers. Yes, I’m going to ask you to subscribe to mine. Here’s my pitch, and I promise it’ll be quick.

All posts on The Writing Shed will be free for the time being, until I get the lay of the land, and I suspect most posts will always be free. I think everyone who got this post as an email is already signed up as a free subscriber. (I’m still figuring out how Substack works.) But I’m also offering the option to pay for a subscription to show your support. Beyond my undying gratitude, there will be perks. You can read the details on the About page. If you’re interested, you can subscribe there, or you can do it here:

The About page also spells out my current plan for posting here. The short version: I’ll have a post every Friday with a short essay and my favorite links of the week. I’ll have one other post earlier in the week — a mix of things, including a couple of projects I want to try so I can see what y’all think. As I get closer to deadline on my dog-show book — the deadline is up in the air right now because of COVID — I’ll devote a lot of posts to the ins and outs of writing that book and the (many, many, MANY) steps in the publishing process.

But the truth is, I don’t know what this will become. You’ll help me figure it out by telling me what you’d like to see. I’ll stumble along until it starts to feel right. That’s part of the joy of writing. You start with a blank page … and then you put a couple of words on it … and you end up taking a journey, often to a far different place than where you started. Every new adventure requires that first step. Here we go.

— TT