iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

Is it just me or has spellcheck gotten worse since AI's been here?

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

I feel so factually sad. It is alive and everywhere as skin.

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

nothing could have prepared me for how unraveling postpartum depression would be. in birthing my daughter, did i also (re?)birth a girl I thought I wasn't anymore, a girl I left in Iowa?

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

Bummed as I'm always bummed that they didn't get raptured.

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

The thing I like about dark mode is its easier on the eyes when a fresh new horror appears

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

Some really great examples of innovative chaptering, even something as simple as inverting a reader's expectations (starting with ch. 47 on p. 289 with the numbers counting down from there, as in Chuck Palahniuk’s SURVIVOR) can give us other pathways towards telling a story well.

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

Loved the latest substack from @mdbell79.bsky.social on putting title chapters to work: inspired me to mess around with the idea of including some clearly demarcated 3rd person passages in my novel so I can tell more stories of people in space... mattbell.substack.com/p/54-putting...

mattbell.substack.com

#54: Putting Your Chapter Titles to Work

Karen Russell, Brian Evenson, Danya Kukafka, Chuck Palahniuk, Diane Williams

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

I love this piece, Amy! I'm working with an unnamed narrator in my novel too, and I appreciate the question you're asking: "When the voice telling the story does not give you their own name, what else are they holding back?" And yes—are there ways in which an unnamed "I" becomes a kind of "you"?

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

me: (checking that I'm logged into my own account before liking something) me: 😑

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Corey Brickley * Blight's Hollow Dot Com @coreybrickley.bsky.social · 09/08/2025

oh my gosh their arguments against this being a class action lawsuit are so goofy. its bad because "seven million claimants would kill the company" and "it would be difficult to figure out the rights and compensation for each of the 7 million" so whyd you steal from 7 million people??? dingus!

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

a shark! and yes, I wrote shortform recently and it felt like a luxurious bath: I could tinker to my heart's content :)

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

So to ensure I'm not toying around with earlier chapters, I've got a list of "scenes to write" in a separate doc, and I'm just gonna tackle them one at a time. Then I'll frankenstien and finesse as a treat.

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

In undergrad, it was especially hard for me to move on in writing a story if each sentence, each word, wasn't *just* right. A college professor told me to stop finessing and keep going, just sit down and don't get up until the story has an ending. I think this is novel advice too.

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scha·den·freu·de @blisterpearl.bsky.social · 05/07/2025

"When 8 men have more money than 4 billion people combined, folks relying on food stamps or Medicaid aren't the problem."

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

"What if we widen our understanding of greatness? Life is not narrow and vertical, it doesn’t just go up or down. Life is horizontal, unfolding, sprawling, vast. We don’t build life like a skyscraper."

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

"Why does the myth of upward movement persist so stubbornly? Why do we measure greatness by vertical gain? ...Somehow, we believe that ‘up there’ where it’s bright, that's where life is truly happening." Really appreciate this perspective from Nadia Meli. substack.com/@nadiameli/p...

substack.com

Your life is not a ladder.

The capitalist fever dream of greatness only has two directions. But life has more.

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

I haven’t drawn in years, but I was thinking about how little kids draw all the time—and how much unabashed joy they have—and I want to too

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 10/05/2025

Who else is notebooks deep in Blue Prince? This game rules.

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

“Don’t talk about the moon, I remind myself. Ask everyone how _their_ day was.”

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

“I was busy…but I always have time to worry.” This Miranda July quote (from ALL FOURS) hitting a little too close to home.

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EROCY @erocy.world · 07/05/2025

Reminds me of this eternal Ted Chiang banger-

Highlighted text form THE NEW YORKER

The task that generative A.I. has been most successful at is lowering our expectations, both of the things we read and of ourselves when we write
anything for others to read. It is a fundamentally dehumanizing technology because it treats us as less than what we are: creators and apprehenders of meaning. It reduces the amount of intention in the world.

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Anna Vangala Jones @anniejowrites.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

babe are you ok you’ve barely written about your characters sighing, looking, or nodding & you’ve only typed the word “just” 40 times

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

For those interested in a more unhinged severance bingo

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

Building a severance season finale bingo card if anyone wants to play along.

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 16/03/2025

Woke up from a nap with this small rattling poem

I was

I am
a sing
-le note
in a bird
‘s caught
throat

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Opinion Editor @ Bluesky @dly.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

us? the nation who ate Tide Pods? has resurrected measles??? I don’t believe it.

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

Phenomenal piece by @sfmontgomery.bsky.social : “I’ve come very far in ignoring advice like this—the kind that suggests my writing is only of value if I demonstrate how far away from my disability I have managed to escape.”

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

Sometimes to counter the worry that robots are taking over I think about how a printer literally stops working if the paper is wrinkled.

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Erin Reed @erininthemorning.com · 19/02/2025

Public comment is now open for passport gender marker changes. You can go here to go to each of the three proposed passport rules, and submit comment. My suggestion: be unique, argue for trans-inclusive policies, against the constitutionality of the changes, etc. www.reddit.com/r/Passports/...

reddit.com

Public comment on US passport form changes related to trans

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Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 19/02/2025

Just a reminder that fascists, authoritarians, dictators of all stripes destroy archives— books, museums, databases, &c— because those things provide windows onto a plurality of other ways we might organize the world. And so preserving, defending, and spreading that knowledge harms those regimes.

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 15/02/2025

“Tender, crumbly, crunchy, buttery, creamy, crispy, velvety. You eat and weep at the glorious textures.” Devastating and timely and beautifully horrifying @claudiamonpere.bsky.social

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

“Like a ransom note written in letters cut from newspapers, this story assembles real-life fragments of experiences and feelings into something that makes sense.”

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

Etgar Keret calls them “reality patches,” the true things we weave into our fictions. I’ve told students in the past to ‘let everything in’ and this is what I mean—your grief, your surprise, the neighbor’s behavior, the rabbit whisker on the living room rug.

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

YES. I feel like fiction is my way of telling the truth, of taking some stimuli from real life and kaleidoscoping it into something stranger (and, somehow, truer) open.substack.com/pub/etgarker...

The stories always start from something in the real world (an image, a sensation, a sentence) that attaches to something inside me (a thought, a feeling, a longing) only to burst out together in the form of a story. Most of the stories I’ve written are like a simile of the event that birthed them: a girlfriend who leaves is a great inspiration for a story about the end of the world; a bout of diarrhea produces the tragic tale of a frustrated plumber; bad turbulence on a long flight generates a story about someone who gets into heaven, only to discover that he’s allergic to angel feathers

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

It’s like a tiny love letter to flash! Absolutely loved it—thanks for writing!

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

Exactly! Flash invites that kind of mess-making experimentation and it’s part of what makes reading flash so pleasurable. If every 500-word story moved the same way, it would grow tiring

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

I’ve been reading substacks instead of scrolling, holding my daughter instead of engaging with the news. It is a privilege to be her parent, to watch the sun rise together, to see if her eyes stay blue.

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

Omg relate to this so much: “He [my inner critic] is capitalism, basically saying you’re nothing, you’re not profitable, no one will ever care. But in the end, my inner child is wayyy stronger when I allow her to be.”

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

“We all know the Didion quote by now. This is it, this is how we survive. We tell stories. We find each other in the most unlikely way: by reaching up into that great sea of consciousness and plucking some small image out and following it.” 🔥🔥🔥

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

And while all the definitions are interesting and helpful, I fully co-sign the idea that the inbetween-ness, unpinnable-down qualities of flash is part of what makes it magic

So, maybe (having just spent the best part of fifteen hundred words doing the exact opposite!) we should put our need for labels to one side and simply let each piece of writing be whatever it needs to be. Whether we’re writing short or medium or long, gritty or lyrical or funny, deep and layered or puffy and light, let’s allow ourselves to simply swim about in this constellation of forms until we find the right combination of elements to do justice to our idea. Let’s allow those butterflies (or glow-worms, or bumblebees, or hummingbirds, or moths) to flutter free of their jam jars and consider how they might metamorphosise into something even more brilliant by the notion of being free.

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

Really enjoyed this substack exploring definitions of flash fiction by @mattkendrick.bsky.social prattlefogandgravelrap.substack.com/p/a-butterfl...

There’s something lyrical about the tonal quality of flash even in pieces that skew towards the more realist or gritty side of the spectrum. Even in the humorous, flash has a certain tone. It’s repetition. It’s imagery. It’s rhythm and sound and sentence construction and voice. The tone of flash is both restrained and propulsive.

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

This pop quiz from @mcrane12.bsky.social’s I KEEP MY EXOSKELETONS TO MYSELF

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

Working at @uapoetrycenter.bsky.social is an incredible gift—because I get to go to readings like this "for work," where Ada Limón casts spells and makes us laugh and launches us directly into space: voca.arizona.edu/reading/ada-...

Ada Limón reading poetry in December 2024

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Melissa Goodrich @goodmel.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

I miss snow so much. Softness falling. How you could hear the quiet if you just stood still. I felt fearless traipsing through the woods on unploughed snow. I wandered as far as I wanted—following my own footprints home.

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