I'm imagining a more beautiful future

Here’s the index of everything I’ve written so far.

At The Elysian, it is my goal, not to point out all the problems with the world—all the other writers do enough of that—but to think through the solutions, and I do that through essays and fiction.

Essays

Every Monday, I publish essays thinking through a better future. Here are my favorites so far:

• Philosophy

  • Humanism is my religion now

  • I’m so over dead French writers

  • I’m studying all of the utopian novels this year

  • We don’t need our political ideologies anymore

  • Why I don’t read modern journalism

• Government

  • Opening our borders will solve just about everything

  • What if countries had to compete for citizens?

  • What if countries acted more like companies?

• Capitalism

  • A brief history of capitalism (& socialism & communism)

  • What is the point of profit?

  • What if it’s not cool to be a bad capitalist anymore?

  • An alternative to “tax the rich”

  • We don’t need to “degrow” the economy

  • We need to grow our economy to advance humanity

  • This could be our economy in the year 2100

• Work and leisure

  • A day in the life of my post-AI world

  • Automation has already taken our jobs

  • Are 20-hour workweeks on their way?

  • Is your company wasting your time?

  • Is it for work or for pleasure?

  • Economic possibilities for our grandchildren (re-visited)

  • Yes, the future should be analog

  • Will we return to craftwork?

  • Remote work could solve global poverty

• Technology (Post Modern, a podcast)

  • Flying Cars

  • Humanoid Robots

  • The Metaverse

  • The Replicator

• Culture

  • Will we still have culture in the future?

  • We don’t need to colonize the world anymore

  • What if women were in charge?

• Cities

  • Inside the utopian cities of Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power

  • Electric vehicles are not the future (walking is)

• Health

  • We need to disrupt the food industry

  • We won’t need doctors in the future

  • Yes, we will increase our lifespan with David Gobel

Fiction

On Fridays, I send out a piece of utopian fiction imagining a more beautiful future. I’m currently serializing Oblivion, a utopian novella inspired by classical utopian literature. Here’s the story so far:

• Oblivion, here’s the index for the book!

  • Prologue - Elysia finds herself in paradise

  • Chapter 1 - We will create a more beautiful future

  • Chapter 2 - Humanity will mingle

  • Chapter 3 - A garden will heal all disease ←everyone’s favorite chapter

  • Chapter 4 - We will leave the past behind

  • Chapter 5 - We will live hundreds of years

  • Chapter 6 - We will reach immortality

  • Chapter 7 - How do we get there from here ←the most shared chapter

  • Chapter 8 - Escaping into a better world

  • Chapter 9 - Elysia must face the truth

  • Chapter 10 - In which Elysia remembers her past

  • Chapter 11 -In which Elysia wonders if this is even real

• Short fiction

  • A day in the life of my post-AI world

  • What if Hawaii had remained Hawaiian?

  • AI could cure all disease

My Process

I also share my process, and my life, as I go. Here are some of the things I’ve learned about writing and publishing on the internet since I began this newsletter.

• My research on the publishing industry

  • No one will read your book (and other truths about publishing) ← This is my second most popular post of all time

  • Writing books isn’t a good idea (because there’s no market for them) ←This is my most popular post of all time

  • How authors are earning $50k+ on Kickstarter

  • How to sell books for $1 million each

• How I write

  • How I became a writer

  • Everything you need to know about my daily writing ritual

• My newsletter strategy

  • How I can afford to be a full-time writer

  • How I earned 1,200 newsletter subscribers in one summer

  • What I learned from one year on Substack

  • Here’s the business plan for my newsletter

  • Sanity check: Do you actually read serial fiction online?

• Case studies

  • How authors are earning $50k+ on Kickstarter

  • Emilia Rose earns six figures writing erotica on Patreon

  • Zogarth earns $20,000/month writing fantasy on Patreon

  • Shirtaloon makes $20,000/month writing LitRPG on Patreon

  • DC Kalbach earns six figures writing romance novels for Kindle Unlimited

  • A.N. Boyden makes $11k/month serializing romance novels

  • Wildbow makes $7,600/month writing fiction on Patreon

• Resources

  • My spreadsheet of all the literary agents worth querying

My newsletter has been featured by BBC, Business Insider, Fast Company, Publisher’s Weekly, Means of Creation, and Morning Brew; and in 2022, I was awarded one of 10 places in Substack’s coveted fellowship program.

I hope this provides a good introduction to my work so far, and I’m so excited to continue the work next week!

Thank you so much for being here, and if we haven’t met yet come say hi in the comments!

Thanks for reading,

Elle Griffin