Dear busy reader,
I’m positive you are busy. It’s that time of the year: peak sunshine, kids roaring out of school, visitors rolling up with suitcases, festival bunting flying, and holidays that somehow involve more errands to run. The long days create many hours, and we think of hours as cups, and fill them until they brim.
Over the years I’ve come to realise that I often feel worn out during summer. I suspect it’s the constant light exposure; my batteries are so energised I can’t discharge them properly, and true, deep rest is elusive.
So I appreciate you taking the time to read my newsletter! I’m sure it feels like you don’t have the patience to sit down with your beverage of choice, and flip through all your reading material while the skies are such an inviting shade of blue.
I’ve been using Substack for just five months, but the summer solstice1 is a good time to reflect on how this migration and change of direction has fared so far.
In Irish, the word for solstice is grianstad, which translates as sun-stop. That’s because if you observe the sun’s position in the sky carefully, as our agrarian ancestors did, it appears to halt for several days, before beginning its incremental change again. This is a good period to take stock of plans and objectives for the rest of the year.
The period between now and our next seasonal holiday — Lughnasadh — is of great importance to farmers. It is what lays the foundation for a good harvest. Irish weather, always temperamental, can be heartbreaking on this front. We’ve been experiencing a week of startling sun, impressive thunderstorms and sheets of rattling rain, which is not good for beast or grain.
I love the drama of lightning and thunder, however!
If you examine my first newsletter on Substack, you’ll see that I promised a fortnightly newsletter, covering a range of topics from technology, culture, film, art philosophy, and writing, and I’ve hit all those markers.
In mid-April I began producing a shorter ‘Extra Extra’ newsletter, which tends to focus on a couple of smaller subjects. So now you receive a weekly newsletter. I reported on the ‘Maycellany’ daily art challenge I undertook for the month of May, and that morphed into my ‘Reading the Signs’ daily writing challenge for the month of June — which is still on-going.
I decided to publish these observations on Substack every day, but not send it to my subscribers as an email (unless you opted in), as I figured it would strain your inbox tolerance. All of the entries can be read online if you fancy looking through the nineteen posts so far. Each day begins with a short description in the Chat facility in Substack, and then becomes an expanded observational post later. I’ve enjoyed the challenge enormously, and it’s achieving what I wanted it to achieve: to force me to write quickly and often, and to refine my ability to pay attention. I’m trying to lose a certain perfection-driven preciousness that hampered my writing, so this practice has been restorative. More on this further in the newsletter.
During this period, Substack has been consistently adding new features, with the biggest being Notes. This is sorta like an internal Twitter for Substack writers and readers, but has little of the belligerent attention-seeking energy of the blue bird social media. Because there is no algorithmic rewards granted to outraged and incendiary messages, Notes tends to remain civilised. Of course people disagree and can even be mean-spirited, but there’s no benefit to keep squirting accelerant upon the flames of fury (other than a small burst of self-righteousness). The Note is unlikely to gain traction.
Notes has been a fantastic method to discover new writing on Substack. The company also has regular threads that highlight some of the best writing on Substack and asks people to promote work they are enjoying. This may sound borderline sentimental, but I feel my life has been enriched by my experience with this platform. Not only am I accessing lots of long-form memoir/non-fiction/fiction/cartoons/poetry/podcasts, but many are by artists I would not have discovered via social media.
I’m able to grow my audience and engage with them directly without my feed being throttled. It exhibits a culture of encouragement, and if there’s anything artists need more than anything now it’s encouragement. The news is bursting with prophesies of doom for creators, with an almost sadomasochistic glee, and it’s difficult not to be dispirited by it.
Partly what drove me to begin a newsletter here was accepting the signs of collapse across traditional markets, and a recognition that a direct, unmediated connection to my audience was going to be essential in the future.
Thanks to a sense of malaise brought on my poor social media consumption habits I had not utilised my old newsletter well. There was a sense of why bother? and what do I have to say? and a weariness about appearing to flog my wares to the same group of good-natured people. I disliked the self-promotion part of writing. I was happy to big-up my friends but cringed whenever I had to do the same for my work.
But as 2022 ended I realised I was going to have to change tactics, as the future I saw coming down the tracks wasn’t going to care about my insecurities. It could crush my spirit and my ability to earn money.
There are many concerning indicators for creative people, but the best response is not to make yourself small and tight, but to reach out and keep reaching out. Expansion, not contraction, is the way forward.
I exported my cadre of subscribers from my Mailchimp newsletter back in January 2023 and formulated a plan of work. While I knew instinctively I was making the best decision, I had concerns about keeping up with the schedule and maintaining the quality of my output.
As I began I noticed that 15+ years on social media had trained me to exhibit a muted response to people’s material. I rarely engaged in the comments section on Substack and I often didn’t ‘like’ newsletters even when I enjoyed them. I’d been habituated to non-engagement, because in certain circles engagement invariably led to ridiculous arguments. You’re encouraged to spout, then ‘block and walk’ if people replied with insulting or bad faith replies (and often, that was your best option). If you are forced to react this way for years it wears you down. The easiest attitude is to withdraw and protect your head-space. That’s what I did.
I began to reduce my armoured cynicism and started to interact with other Substack writers and readers, taking a position of honest reflection. Of course, some Substacks are more contentious than others, but you can pick and choose which ones you interact with, rather than decide that non-participation is the only wise choice.
Will Substack remain this way? There’s no guarantee! I’ve been in tech circles long enough to know that companies can flip over time, but for now it’s a good choice.
So let’s talk hard facts.
My subscriber base has increased by 180% since I joined Substack, and the introduction of Notes resulted in reliable growth.
The main driver for this has been my consistent output, even when it felt like I was writing into the void. Perhaps if I had continued with frequent posts via Mailchimp I would have seen similar numbers, but I never found the enthusiasm for it.
Even now, I often second-guess myself after I push publish — especially if I do not get much feedback on a post. But, is that the point of the writing? Would I stop if no one reads it?
I’m doing this because it’s making me a better and more honest writer.
Because back in 2019 I almost self-destructed as a writer.
I had one of those unfortunate collaborations that resulted in being messed about by the other party — I’m not trying to be coy, and who did this is not the point. There was a devastating lash of criticism before I was dropped, and I was left to deal with a shock to my creative confidence. After a short period I pulled myself out of the ravine of self-doubt and came up with a plan to recover from the disappointment. And 2020 rolled along… it was remarkably bad timing for me.
The following years from 2020-2022 saw me struggling to cope with the fallout of the pandemic, along with a slew of issues, including mental and physical health problems. In the past year I have lost two friends to cancer, as well as the passing of several relatives and my father (the anniversary of his death is rapidly approaching). I discussed almost none of it online, but I had a number of wonderful friends and family who were incredibly supportive.
When it came to creative work I felt like Sisyphus, except I never reached the top of the mountain. I could write but it was a long, brutal march every time in which I whipped myself along. I rarely experienced pleasure or satisfaction when I finished work. Each new project induced dread. I recognised this was entirely self-generated, and that knowledge became another boulder I had to push.
I was the only person in my way and I was the only person who could solve the problem. That reality ate at me.
I knew there was a certain advantage to discussing this on social media, and I’m sure there would have been genuine outpourings of concern. But I walled myself off, following an old pattern of quiet implosion, distrusting the impulse towards self-expression online as anything but asking for a temporary ego-boost prompted by insecurity, and I was right.
And I was wrong.
During the past three years I’ve figured a great deal out. I’ve dealt with my health by tackling it using a multi-prong approach, which resulted in continuous improvement over a sustained period. I continue to make progress.
When life’s tsunamis curl towards me I have better buoyancy. I’m less likely to be tossed about in the depths, swirling, gasping, in the darkness.
In the end, what saved me was writing my way out of the problem.2
I made an error in placing all emphasis on one type of writing: writing for paid work. That’s what I was, a professional writer. Writing for fun, to figure things out, was not productive or important.
The more I self-flagellated myself for stressing over writing, the more I associated stress with writing. It was an effective feedback loop.
One broken by the obvious step of removing all stress over writing this newsletter, and simply committing to doing it regularly.
I wasn’t fully aware I was tricking myself back into confidence when I sent that first newsletter out on the 31st of January; Imbolg eve, the festival associated with the end of winter, and new birth.
It’s been a dance of the seven veils for myself, where the final revelation was so simple I felt myself reach for the familiar habit of lashing self-criticism.
Instead, I chose to laugh and shake my head at the solution, and my cluelessness.
And thank whatever part of myself pulled off this gradual, liberating striptease.
In publication news, I’m pleased to be among such excellent company in the Phantasmagorial Special Edition #8, edited by Allison Weir - the Women in Horror issue. My story ‘Suspension’, first published in my collection The Boughs Withered (When I Told Them My Dreams), is re-printed here. You can see a list of some of the mighty contributors in the image.
I’m also presenting my ‘Take it Eerie: Writing Unsettling Scenes’ workshop this Thursday evening, which is part of the Summer Frights series, organised by Alex Davis Events.
I’m a day early, the solstice takes place in Galway, Ireland at 15:57 on Wednesday the 21st of June.
A note about journals. Sure, I journal. I’ve multiple journals for different aspects of my life, and for most of them I use pen and paper. Years ago I realised that if a journal just devolves into complaining about the same problem, over and over in different ways, you are just keeping that agitation alive, so I don’t indulge in that type of journaling any more. I hand-write in journals to untangle creative knots, laser-focus on answers, and to ponder existential issues. It is essential to my process.
A wonderful thought provoking post! Thank you!
Thank you for sharing your experience. I'm sorry for your losses and uncertainties you faced. You followed what felt right, and may it be a wonderful journey of discovery and creativity for you. Interestingly, we both started around the same time here. So delighted to have met you here!