Magnetic Experimentation
Experimenting with Serial Storytelling, Myth, and Writing Fiction to Heal
If you’re new to The Rebel MFA Way, welcome! This is a bit of a cross-genre essay around writing and life and new experiments coming to this publication.
Scroll down to the TLDR section if you want the highlights!
[NOTE: Your email provider may truncate this essay, be sure to click on “keep reading” to read the entire piece.]
This is the first year I’ve decided to have two words of the year instead of the lonely one. I started off 2025 thinking “magnetic” could encompass most of what I want to feel and explore this year, but over the last few weeks, the word I also keep coming back to is: experiment.
And when I put the two together, well, 🤯
In the spirit of magnetic experimentation — I’m excited to introduce you to several of my sparkling new experiments. This essay will be a bit of a primer of whats to come this first quarter and beyond here at Rebel MFA Way and I hope you’ll be as excited as I am.
Experiment #1 — Campfire Tales
I’ve been thinking a lot about myth-tending and storytelling as a living, breathing practice. One of my mentors, Danielle Dulsky, has a fantastic quote that I use as gauge of how well I’m stepping into my “myth-tending” or “story-keeper” role.
“Story keeping is the act of tending and sharing a story for the purpose of transforming self and others.”
I am always searching for the best way to share my gifts with others in a way that also nourishes me. Which is why the old oral traditions of campfire tales feels so magnetic to experiment with.1
In the days of oral traditions, stories didn’t stay fixed. They changed with each telling, shaped by the teller’s voice, the audience’s reactions, and the shared space between them. There was something alive about those moments—something intimate.
That’s the spirit I’m trying to capture with a new experiment I’m calling Campfire Tales.
Once a week, I’ll sit down to tell a story—a new myth or tale. These will be shared as live or pre-recorded sessions, blending storytelling with a brief breakdown of the symbols and themes woven into each tale. My hope is that these stories will feel like a shared experience, even for those listening after the fact, and that they’ll create a sense of connection and wonder, the way myths and campfire stories have always done.
But Campfire Tales is more than just a storytelling project. It’s an experiment in finding new ways to do what I love—sharing stories—in a way that feels accessible, affordable, and digestible.
And, on a personal level, it’s a way to stretch myself. I want to get better at speaking and telling stories aloud—something that feels both exhilarating and vulnerable. I’ve spent so much of my storytelling life behind the safety of the page. Campfire Tales is a chance to step out from behind that curtain and let the stories live in my voice, to feel how they change when they’re spoken instead of written.
Ultimately, the goal of Campfire Tales is to create an archive of stories and symbols—something people can return to at their own pace, whenever they need a spark of meaning or inspiration.
But more than that, it’s about connection. It’s about sitting together by the fire, even if we’re miles apart, and sharing something ancient and human.
Experiment #2 — Writing Fiction to Heal in Real Time
When I wrote my first “writing fiction to heal” novel, Until They Burn, I wasn’t thinking about marketability or structure. I was writing to save myself.
That story burned through me. It allowed me to pour all my tangled emotions—grief, rage, confusion—onto the page. When I finished it, the sizzle burned out. Not because I had failed to sustain the creative spark, but because the story had done its job. It had allowed me to transfer and work through all the feelings I was holding, to process them in a way that words spoken aloud never could.
The act of writing wasn’t just cathartic; it was transformative. And it taught me something profound about storytelling: it isn’t always about the end product. Sometimes, it’s about the process of becoming, the alchemy of turning raw emotions into something that glows with meaning.
This is why the idea of serializing a writing fiction-to-heal novel intrigues me. Healing isn’t a one-and-done process; it’s incremental, unfolding in fragments, much like a serialized story. What if I let the story stay alive longer, releasing it piece by piece, allowing myself (and perhaps others) to heal alongside it?
What if I documented the process, in real time, to show myself (and others) what healing through fiction writing can look like?
So that’s what I’m doing.
Experiment #3 — Serializing “The Archive”
I’ve been writing a project called The Archive. It unfolds in journal entries, fragmented yet intimate, a story that feels like it’s in conversation with me as much as I am with it. It’s made me wonder: is this a novel? A novella? A collection of scenes meant to breathe on their own? Or—perhaps it could be serialized, a living, ongoing project. The idea feels right, though I find myself defying even the loose shape of “serial storytelling” as it’s commonly understood. I’m not sure I care.
This refusal to conform feels like rebellion, and that’s deeply on brand for me. It’s less about defiance for defiance’s sake, though, and more about liberation. When I let go of the need to fit into a pre-existing container, I open myself to the shape the story wants to take—and the freedom feels expansive.
This idea of letting a story unfold one piece at a time isn’t new. In fact, it’s ancient.2
Long before books were bound and sold, stories existed in fragments. Myths were told around fires, passed from one voice to another, evolving with each retelling. Homer’s Odyssey wasn’t written to be consumed all at once but sung in pieces, each part a small flame added to the larger fire. Serial storytelling is as old as human connection itself. It’s a rhythm, a heartbeat of pauses and returns, a promise to come back for more.
Even more recent literary history reflects this. Many of the classic novels we now consider towering, unified works began as serial stories. Dickens published his novels in monthly installments, as did Elizabeth Gaskell and Alexandre Dumas. Serialization wasn’t just a pragmatic choice for these authors—it created space for the story to breathe, evolve, and build a relationship with its audience. And of course, here on Substack, there are many brilliant authors serializing their work. I think I’m going to be in good company.
Self-Imposed Rules for Magnetic Experimentation
Lower the Stakes
As Nic Antoinette said beautifully in her essay, “Lowering the stakes”
“Lowering the stakes doesn’t mean we give up (except when it does and that’s okay too!), and it doesn’t mean all or nothing. No project, performance, or relationship is either sublime perfection or wretched failure.”
So that’s exactly what I’m giving myself permission to do with these experiments… lower the stakes.
Free for Now
One way I can lower the stakes for myself is by giving from my “revolutionary” archetype. That means not succumbing to the capitalistic idea that everything should or needs to be monetized. Thus, these experiments are free for all readers of this publication until they become more than an experiment. And I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.
Flexible Consistency
Another way to lower the stakes for myself (and readers) is to set the expectation of flexible consistency. I’m typically a person who loves a bit of “light” structure so being consistent actually helps me produce/create. However, the minute “pressure” is added, it’s usually a recipe for disaster. So, while I have a general idea of how these experiments are going to look and at what frequency, I’m also keeping myself open to the need to pivot (or quit!) if need be.
Why are you telling us this?
Because I think transparency and modeling are excellent ways to question the status quo, which is what I’m all about here at the Rebel MFA Way. I want you to understand the very human thought processes that go into my decisions because maybe, just maybe, it will inspire you to find your own ways to question the status quo’s in your life.
To Recap or TLDR;
Here’s a tentative publishing schedule for my upcoming experiments:
Tuesdays = Campfire Tales (live + pre-recorded storytelling and symbolic breakdowns in bite-sized chunks) — learn more
Wednesdays = Writing Fiction to Heal in Real Time and/or a personal essay — learn more
Fridays = Serialized entries of The Archive (fiction) — learn more
See what I did there?
It’s not even new to me. I first half-serialized a novel back in like 2014 for my mailing list subscribers. Then I serialized an episodic story through my Back to Bad series. My big experiment for 2023 was to serialize Until They Burn on Ream and here, on Substack. Which I accomplished (though the experiment failed in more ways than one). Anyway, point is, this is a format I’ve returned to over and over again. That says something.