Category: WritingCategory: Writing

One thing about Substack is every newsletter you send is a “launch.” It’s to everyone, your whole audience! It can be intimidating, knowing that everything you write will be seen by 40% of the people you send it to.

Since I’ve set up this site, I find myself posting sometimes twice a day. It feels like my music blogging days, when I found an interesting band or quote, I’d dive into WordPress and just get something posted. That’s exactly what I’ve done today with this post!

Back in those days my music blog could get 5,000 visitors a day – hey, it was 2003!

Now, though, I can write on this site in relative “silence,” without thinking too much about typos or making sure each post is my absolute best.

So I was delighted when I found this quote from Tracy Durnell, (via the Josh Spector newsletter)

If you only write when you’re sure you’ll produce brilliance, you’ll never write. Blogs can help writers trick ourselves out of performance anxiety with lower stakes.

I think about it like this: you can do Morning Pages, which is private, and not for publication of course. Then there’s SENDING A NEWSLETTER. That’s public, that’s out there, it’s showtime!

The in-between is a blog.

It’s public, but… semi-public. Less public than let’s say Cory Doctorow, with his Pluralistic blog.

Have you seen him talk on stage for over an hour about Enshittification? He’s rattling off facts and figures and ideas like he’s reading from a script! Why? Because he writes so much everyday! He wrote a BOOK about it!

Go beyond the idea that you “need eyeballs” for your efforts to be worthwhile, and believe that writing about what you do in a lower stakes manner might be the best thing for your work.

What if you wrote five blog posts for every newsletter you send?

Most people won’t see your blog post, while the newsletter gets delivered to inboxes.

The blog is practice. The newsletter is performance.

A comic works new material, but first they write without an audience.

We talked about this in yesterday’s Escape Pod Zoom call (next one is Sunday at 10am ET), about making videos to showcase our work.

This doesn’t have to mean making dance videos, or shouting directly into the camera, either. Check out the work of Noah Kalina, Taylor Pendleton, Softer Sounds, and ISETTA FILM, and see how they tell stories in their own unique way.

And when I say make a video, I don’t mean produce a fully-featured clip and upload it to YouTube. Set up your smart phone, or turn on your web cam, or make some voice notes talking the thing you do. Do this today. Tomorrow. This will help you when you get interviewed about your work, or someone asks you about your art at the local coffee shop.

Practice talking about your stuff.

“Once I started trying to anticipate what other people would want, I lost my point of view,” says menswear designer Aaron Levine.

Don’t get caught up in how a newsletter to your fans is supposed to look. Don’t assume your fans want something short and sweet, or long and drawn out. You don’t make your art thinking about the audience, so don’t write and share your art in a way that forces you into form that is not your own.

This from ‘MTV Cancels Itself‘ by kd:

MTV didn’t ask me what I wanted to watch. It told me what I would watch.

When you go to someone’s blog, that first post says “this is where we’re starting today.”

Just like MTV, as kd says, the writer didn’t ask what you wanted to watch or listen to, the writer told you.

When a musician gets on stage they don’t run a poll, they’ve made a set list.

When you walk into a record shop, no one asks what you want to hear. Just like MTV, the choice has already been made.

Pick, choose, lead. You’re allowed to say, “I’m going this way, come along if you want.”