Thoughts on Writing and Substack

Rona is rife again, so it should have come as no surprise that what I thought was a nasty summer cold last week, actually announced itself properly on Saturday with the fastest positive Covid test in the West. I started feeling rough on Wednesday. By Friday night I was a shivering, coughing, vomiting mess and although I am starting to slowly feel better, I still can’t eat properly or stand up very well.

I can at least sleep now, without waking every hour to cough or puke, which is not to be sniffed at. And I am doing a lot of sniffing. My eyeballs have stopped hurting too, which is good because it means I can now distract myself by reading or watching the telly again.

I have been thinking about writing more regularly on Substack for a while. I haven’t because I made the mistake of reading one of those ‘How to Win at Substack,’ pieces that seem to make up 75% of most Substack writing, and it said that you should only post once or twice a week maximum, so your audience don’t get fatigued.

I don’t know why I did it. I’m a fool to myself. It reminded me of the time my ex-husband, in a bid to become a millionaire, bought the game Cashflow by Robert Kiyosaki and brow beat me into playing it until I went on strike. He told me the reason I never managed to get out of the rat race was because I wasn’t thinking smart enough. I pointed out that if I started out pulling the ‘you are an indigent hobo’ card, smart thinking was not going to help. He said that was exactly what someone who wasn’t thinking smart would say.

All the time we were married, he wasn’t wealthy. He is now. He may put that down to the divorce. I’d put it down to the fact that he no longer spends several hundred pounds a time on pointless board games that reinforce the con trick that is long term, capitalist bullshit. We will have to agree to differ. Well actually, we won’t, because that’s one of the joys of being divorced, along with no more fucking, educational board games before bedtime.

And one of the joys of having your own Substack is that you can write whatever you want, whenever you want. It never fails to be surprising and delightful that people want to read what I want to write, but sometimes I get sidetracked into thinking that is the point of my writing. What I remembered (again) is that this is my space. It’s one of the few spaces in the world that is 100% my own.

Everything that happens here, happens on my terms and to realise that I have already started to edit myself based on some research I don’t actually even care about is symptomatic of so much of what I find frustrating in real life. I am so attuned to what is acceptable or desirable or ‘nice’, that I obediently fall into line. So often I am miles away from where I want to be before I wake up to myself. It’s more than a little irritating to find myself learning this particular life lesson over and over again.

I am so tired of the constant clamour for authenticity and the often, shocked disapproval when something or someone real rocks up. Be yourself, but not like that. Think about your worth in relation to ‘this’ or ‘that’ or ‘him’ or ‘them’. Slim down, take up less space, be quieter, look younger. Age gracefully. Don’t bother people. Spoon feed people yourself in socially acceptable, watered down form and apologise if they don’t like it or you. Don’t let the door hit you on your way out.

In terms of writing there is a lot of advice out there for people wanting to make it. Some of it, no doubt, good. A lot of it probably. There is a difference though, between writing to make it and writing because you have a different agenda. Writing to ‘make it’, whatever ‘it’ is, is a bid to capture whatever the literary zeitgeist is, whether that’s cornering the dark academia market or basking in Tik Tok viral glory. It’s not wrong to want to make it as a writer, I’m all for it. My bookshelves would be pointless without all those people who have made it and handed over their time and craft, love and care, sandwiched between the covers of a best selling book. It’s just that’s not why I do it, and sometimes I am seduced into forgetting that.

My plan then, is to write more newsletters. It will almost certainly happen this week as I am trapped on a boat with a grumpy cat and a bad case of COVID to keep me company. I will write what I want, when I want, with no plan other than to please myself. I’m telling you so that if that thought fills you with gloom, you are free to go and find other, no doubt excellent newsletters that will ping into your inboxes with less regularity than mine. It’s all good. I shan’t be sad if you decide to leave. I will be sad if you decide to stay and moan about it though. Despite being raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition, I am 100% sure that we get no prizes, now or in the afterlife for unnecessary suffering. That’s a bigger con than capitalism. I give myself permission to write what I want and I give you full permission (not that you need it) to read what you want.

It’s a deal.