Having a Go in Your 80s

From Morse code to substack

Writing a story to be sent to Reuters by Morse code, 1969, West Papua Morse code station

In October two years ago, I attempted something unusual for a man in his 80s.

I became my own publisher: in opposition to the massive Australian media organisations, if you like.

To do this, I sat down at my computer in the front room of my Queenslander house in Taringa, Brisbane, and started writing short stories.

Not traditional short stories … mine were stranger than fiction: short stories about real people and factual events … things that happened when I was there.

Things I saw.

After 65 years as a journalist and an author I had all these stories in me.

Stories I didn’t want to disappear … when I did.

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With my lifelong knowledge of the laws of defamation and libel, unlike other short story writers, I didn’t have to change the names to protect myself. As I tapped the keys of my computer, I didn’t feel the keys of my house were on the line.

Part of my motivation to strike out was that Australian newspapers had become purely political … so their feature stories became, almost without exception, political.

When you looked at the masthead, you knew what the view would be on any topic.

In fact, the articles had become so predictable that some of their writers seemed to write the same story every week.

That was why I decided not to write political stories – there are more than enough of those already. And why I decided to be totally unpredictable.

None of my subscribers have any idea what I will write about next.

And nor do I.

My philosophy is just to tell the readers something new in every story.

Something human, emotional, moving … which is why my description of this site is “Telling Stories”: which, of course, has two meanings.

(For those outside Australia, the site is called Over the Top with Hugh because of my childhood memoir Over the Top with Jim.)

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After a search, a friend found this here San Francisco self-publishing platform called substack.

He helped me because, as a young computer engineer, he found it hard to believe that when I was the Reuters correspondent in Indonesia in the 1960s, my stories went out at 20-words-a-minute by Morse code.

He also acts as my Pictorial Editor.

Thank you, Mike.

I immediately liked one particular aspect of substack.

The New York Times has always boasted they publish “All the News that’s Fit to Print”.

Yet newspapers and magazines have always cut stories to the space available between advertisements – a system that I used to call “All the News that’s Print to Fit”.

But on substack I found that, for once in my life, I could write as much as was needed to tell the full tale. There was no one in a distant office to chop off a carefully considered ending, or rewrite a delicate introduction.

Of course, no writer can survive without an editor to stop them making a fool of themselves, but fortunately I’m married to one.

Thank you, Helen.

Another substack bonus was that I could put in as many pictures as I could find.

When there were none, I’d ask my London-based friend, the artist David Mackintosh, to create drawings to add an extra dimension to the narrative.

David Mackintosh illustrations © profuselyillustrated.com

Thank you, David.

I started out with a few dozen subscribers – relatives and book readers — and, thanks to the beauty, the ease, and the swiftness of substack … I’m now heading for 500.

New subscribers arrive nearly every day: according to substack my site is now read “across 7 US states and 12 countries”.

Some stories get 2,000 views. (Which is not many if you say it fast — but a lot of people if they all gathered in my house.)

I don’t know where they hear about it because I don’t have a profile on social media sites and I don’t promote, advertise, or even appear in public.

I just write … which is why I’ve managed to put up 80 Posts in those two years.

It was infamous British spy Kim Philby who said: “A good spy sits at home and thinks”.

So I’m a sort of societal spy.

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The first Post I wrote on substack was on October 13, 2022: “When My Number Came Up”.

I’d always wanted to tell this tale because of the valuable lesson therein: never agree to sit in judgment on the work of other writers. Anything can happen, and probably will.

Some readers have asked why I don’t put these stories in a book.

But short stories are different from a book.

Each is a tiny bubble … which would float off, or burst and disappear, in the mass of information inside a book.

So, for all those readers who weren’t around when I started my substack site, here it is: the first Post I put up two years ago this month.

Click here: When My Number Came Up

David Mackintosh illustrations © profuselyillustrated.com