Writing a novel on Substack

Inspired by Mark Diacono

I have had an ambition for many years. That ambition is to spend my weekday mornings writing, and the afternoons outside growing things.

The issue preventing this has always been a need to make a living.

At least that has been the issue until today.

Fifteen years ago we started a flower farm here at Common Farm in sunny Somerset. At the time the kind of small scale growing of which we are an example was quite a new way of growing flowers for sale. Generations of scaling up or giving up meant that there were few flower growing operations left in the UK as their production had been dwarfed by the government-supported Dutch growers who had become vast multinational businesses growing flowers for export all around the world at driven-down prices UK growers couldn’t meet. Common Farm Flowers became part of a worldwide movement providing balance to the big multinationals: we grow a wide variety of cut flowers and foliage in a polyculture providing an excellent habitat for many kinds of invertebrates and their keen predators.

We’ve built a business which is the antithesis of large multinational piling high to keep the product cheap. And the market has evolved to meet what we grow. Yes, we are reliable suppliers of high quality cut flowers and foliage, but we also work on an almost bespoke level of creation: most of the flowers we grow fill mixed buckets for diy weddings in our very local area.

We’ve rationalised our offering over the years: we used to do bouquets by post throughout the UK, as well as full installation luxury wedding design and creation, as well as the diy wedding buckets which have always been popular. Over the years the business has evolved and I’ve always had an eye on streamlining what we do: it’s important we make a living, and that there’s creative fun to be had, but increasingly it’s important that I take time from the flower farming, that the flower farming pays enough for me to take that time to write. I set the write in the morning and garden in the afternoon objective many years ago. It seems as though I might finally be getting there.

So the flower farming seems to be going ok. What about the writing? Well hello Substack!

One of the people who encouraged me to come over here is

Mark Diacono

. He’s a great food and gardening-for-food writer, as well as in real life an interesting good egg.

I saw him post on Instagram a while ago that he was planning to write a book on Substack. This felt very Dickens to me: publishing episodes to an audience on a weekly or fortnightly or whatever schedule: a traditional writing idea. After all, writing in a vacuum, just one in one’s ivory tower is lonely, and producing a finished product which could have benefited enormously from the focus group contribution of subscribers would need a great deal more work before publication. Why wouldn’t one instead write in real time for the people who’ve chosen to read what one has to say? Imagine the reassurance of subscribers enjoying, or the (hopefully) constructive criticism of subscribers when they feel the writing needs work? For me this is irresistible. And at last here’s a social media platform where there’s room for longer form posts, and people expect longer form posts, and are kind enough to take time to read longer form posts.

And so this last day of January 2025 I’ve just posted the first chapter of a work that’s been bubbling around in my head for years. I hope the subscribers like it!

The image below is of some of my earlier writing. Bottoming out a drawer Mum turned up these manuscripts I made in 1975 aged 8. The desire to write has been there in me for a looooong time. And I have published books in the past. But until now I’ve not managed a long term establishment of a working life which is writing in the morning and gardening in the afternoon. 2025 might be the year I achieve this ambition. Wish me luck!