The million dollar question!! I believe that we are what we tell ourselves we are. And that even within all of the constant change and fast-paced nature that we can't seem to rid ourselves of, we'll always crave the detail and authenticity that only long-form storytelling can present. We are ALLLLL deep, emotional beings, each with long-form stories waiting to be heard, and the more we see them in modern media, the more comfortable we'll feel sharing all of ourselves -- not just the highlights. Keep pushing the narrative!! I'm in your corner <3
Eliza, thank you! I think, after having written and chewing on this for two days, I've concluded that I am all of these things! It's gotten blurred anyway, and continues to blur. Not sure why I spend so much energy grappling with it 😀
I’m right there with you, thinking a lot about how things have changed. When I started making music, it was about the craft - writing and performing. When I got into the business side, it became about selling, which I loved. If I marketed authentically, people came to my shows. Now it feels like no matter how you market yourself, if you’re not posting videos constantly, it’s like you don’t exist. Success isn’t measured by your growth as an artist anymore - it’s all about views, likes, and comments. The long-game, the development, the time it takes to nurture your craft - it's gone, replaced by the race for viral attention.
We’ve lost sight of sustainability. We’re pressured to keep up, but creativity takes time! In a world obsessed with now, we need to remember that great art needs patience.. X
I spotted a grammatical typo. Oh well. This newsletter will probably always have typos and stray words I forget to delete. At least I didn't send it out with a typo in the email subject line. Yeah, I DID THAT once.
Micro-influencer is a good thing… a MI to an Influencer or Content Creator is like what a reduction sauce is to a pot of bland gravy. There is a lot of gravy, but everyone who eats it is not affected but a reduction? That hits…
I don't know if I want to be any kind of influencer. Like the way I didn't want to be a mommy blogger or a momtrepreneur or any of the number of things I've been called in the past 😅
Oh, this a million times. I hate labels and titles and such… I don’t want *know* if I influenced anyone to do, say or feel anything… it makes me feel… icky, for lack of a better word, to know I wrote something that made someone act on something. It’s ok if I did, but I don’t want to know about it… compliments makes me tense up and feel generally uncomfortable and then I get self-conscious and I don’t know what to do with my hands, including writing another piece. What do I do with this new-found superpower? I can’t risk it influencing stuff that isn’t … good…
I long for the days when we used to write something and never knew for sure how the it affected the reader… maybe they would write a letter to the editor or call the desk and scream at my editor, but rarely these things got passed along. If you got to keep writing stuff, in journalism or commercial copy or literature, etm… you knew you were doing ok.
Comments killed off that culture… now, too many writers chase influence, attention and engagement and sadly the people who write the checks think that equates to good writing or content or whatever the hell anyone wants to call the stuff between the first line of the lede and the last line of the kicker.
Maybe we just start calling it Stuff®️ instead of content 😀
(Now I think I’ll expand out this comment to a newsletter. See what you made me do!!! 😂😂😂)
Interesting thought and musings...I don't have a definitive answer either to the "writer/content creator" except that the idea of a platform soley devoted to writing and writers was exactly what drew me to this platform in the first place (as I think it did you too). All I kept hearing was that Substack allowed you to concentrate on just the writing. As some who had no social media (I'd had a Twitter account years ago but closed it down) that really appealed to me, as both a reader and a writer. I really wish it had stayed that way...
Writing is an art, how many times have we heard that? So why wouldn’t you call yourself a writer, an artist? I think we fall into categorizing more black and white than grays, and often it’s really about falling in between. But permit me to offer my perspective: I’m not a writer by any means. I have always felt grossly inadequate about anything I write. I abhorred having peer proofing, and only as an adult in education came to terms, gritted teeth, with allowing a trusted colleague to help me at times. She is an English teacher and my co-advisor and when I read her emails drafted to a parent telling them that their child is struggling or in the verge of failing something, and how she’s crafted the words, I am just gobsmacked at the beauty of it all. And that’s why a good or great book is so special. To me, writing, as you do, isn’t simply about putting the words together. It’s how you can composed them, have chosen just the right word (like a color), to weave together to create a sentiment (like texture). There are times I re-read a sentence or a passage because it’s is so gorgeously put together, like I’m running my eyes over the words and the letters and seeing how they fit together, like a picture almost.
So that’s just a very round about way of saying that your writing is art. You’re creating the visuals through your words. Keep at it. I’ve been reading your stuff since those days of SFD, when our kids were wee, and you have always crafted your words well, and I’m glad you’re back at it.
CG, always appreciate your perspective. And you must know by now that it's entirely up to me to overcome this internal struggle that I don't even understand. I don't regret going to art school, but it did something damaging to my ability to own my identity as a writer or an artist. I don't expect anyone to understand when I don't even understand it myself.
The hard part with “writer” or “artist” is that the sky is the limit. And unlike other professions there is no obvious baseline.
I suspect architecture school was as traumatic (or exponentially worse) than art school, but even though I’ll never be Jeanne Gang, I have earned the right to practice architecture in the state of Nevada.
Right! It gave you something tangible. Not sure what tangible value I got after being an art, then music major. At the end of the day, I came out alright and had a good/long/successful (I guess) career. I have to keep reminding myself that as my kids get nearer to entering the workforce. This job market, however, is really terrifying.
This is the same convo 10 years ago when fb bought instagram and all of the photographers (myself included) were wondering where we can just share our photography without it being infiltrated by capitalism. I fear it’s a slippery slope from here. If we start seeing ads we’ll probably know the answer.
Yup, we seem to go in cycles like this. Platforms owned by tech companies and tech bros. The sameness of everything. We've seen the playbook countless times.
If they add advertising this site is dead. They will have made a structural change that will irrevocably lead the site to ruin. But I hope that is a long time away, if ever.
Yep. I could see them doing something like small ads here and there, maybe on substacks that are free or even just in the notes feed! I feel like in today's world it's inevitable.
Oh, or like on instagram - you can agree to let ads show in your posts for other people and you get a (very small) cut from it. That might entice people that don't have a lot of paid subscribers...
I'm so glad I'm not the only one feeling all of these things. We've both been online long enough to expect this, but it still kinda just sucks. I would like one place where my writing is the "product". Not the constant, dizzying marketing of the writing. I would also LOVE to not have to see the dashboard every time I write a post.
Yeah, it was to be expected. All the platforms converging to be the same thing. I just changed my bookmark to not load into my dashboard, just my posts. Don't know why I didn't do it sooner!
I’ve personally felt curious about optionality and diversity in terms of tooling, especially as a writer who also works in paint, sound, and film. Some people are more comfortable with one mode v. others and opening up to creators beyond just traditional newsletter writing, and evolution in general, has felt positive to me. Again, I empathize on pressure and noise fatigue; I recognize the pitfalls of choice and expansion.
On the overwhelm you mention wrt stats and feeling the pressure to be profitable: I hear you on this too. FWIW, I turn off all notifications for subs/unsubs and rarely look at stats :) I don’t rely on Substack to pay the bills so I realize I’ve the privilege of writing here purely for my own voice, and I’ve been grateful for amplification and connections. I think I've also grown to regard conflicts between business needs/interest v. user ideals/interest more pragmatically than emotionally (not saying this is good or bad, but might give more color to my thoughts.)
I’m genuinely curious what you expect (different from “prefer,” though interested in this too) from a for-profit platform such as this, in our time? Do you think your initial reactions are partly due to a natural resistsance to change? (I know you’re no stranger to this btw given your own background as a designer.) How do you hope these conversations move us forward (or elsewhere)?
Hopefully this is an interesting contribution to the discussion!
Coleen, it's not a surprise, it was expected. I don't even know why the public vent, other than the frustration of all these platforms moving in the same direction and fighting for the same piece of the creator pie. And yes, maybe it's because I'm at a personal point in my life where I don't want to do everything anymore. As a designer I leaned on my willingness and interest to put on so many roles and hats—sound design, UX, UI, research, branding, data viz, a touch of coding, blah blah, etc. When we owned our biz it was useful and fortunate that I could do everything we needed, but it all lead to burnout. In trying to figure out what I want to do creatively, I've been eliminating things one by one, and so I guess the rub for me personally is that these platforms are nagging reminders that we could do it all—if we want. And I don't know that I want that anymore? I'm tired lol.
Jenna - the pervasive theme from everyone I’ve spoken to lately is, “I am just so god damn tired.” It’s ALL too much. We have to be very selective about what we give our energy to, because we all seem pretty tapped out.
A bunch of years ago, Melissa Urban was talking about how if you run, you’re a runner. If you take photos, you’re a photographer. You don’t have to professionally be that thing or make money from it. If you love it and do it often so it’s a part of you, claim it. I’ve taken photos for 25ish years and I still struggle to say I’m a photographer because it’s not my livelihood. I think for women, especially, we’re taught to play down our talents if they’re not making us (or someone else) money. You are quite obviously an artist, a writer, and many other beautiful things. And you’re not saying that to place yourself above others, you are just describing what makes you tick. Do what you do for the joy, the release, the challenge… and the rest doesn’t matter. Your people find you when you lean into your authentic self - I did!!
All of this makes sense! We are what we do, regardless of whether it's our livelihood. My issue is just an internal battle, and I guess that's why it was/is easier to identify as a designer because that was my job. It's hard to place value on something that doesn't have transactional value, at least in a monetary sense. But it shouldn't be so hard when it has value if it's something we enjoy or love. I'll get around to it eventually ☺️
I've had this same question--what is substack, exactly? Maybe I've been wondering because I am spending more time on it, lately, but I haven't delved into many of the new features and I prefer this site & the app as a place to read. It's kind of like a huge, quirky magazine--which is how the internet felt in early 00s. I like the platform best as a place to find essays and reviews and freeform/personal blogging like yours. I think it's generally good for criticism and for critics. I like seeing people work out their ideas and write about books and movies and I like that people are discussing older books on here, not just new releases. In term of monetizing, I think it's probably best for columnists with a particular area of expertise or people who are running mini magazines. I do wonder about sustainability for many writers on here because there is pressure to produce more. I am rambling a bit but just chiming in to agree that the site/app seem to be evolving quickly and it's hard to say what it is exactly, because people use their substacks for so many different things.
I agree with everything you've written, Hannah. This is why I like it too — the personal essays in particular. Also agree about the monetization, even though I am monetized. I don't have one area of expertise and maybe that is why it's still uncomfortable and why I question the value of it all. Not sure if you've seen it, but shortly after I sent this, we got a newsletter from Hamish that explains what Substack now is!
I am so not interested in seeing or doing more videos. I love words. I tried doing audio on my own Substack but it was a lot more work, so...no thanks. Maybe I'll go back to audio again but not video.
Resonating so much with nearly everything you said here. I just want to write without thinking about what kind of “content” it’s going to be perceived as. I want to write, not curate my life.
For what it’s worth I’m a paid subscriber because I like reading your musings. I really enjoyed your you tube videos but I also realize how much work goes into that. Your drawings are wonderful too but your thoughts and commentary are the reason I subscribe. I don’t expect to get content for free but am getting overwhelmed by all the Substack creators and their various levels of subscriptions. I need to be realistic about both my budget and the amount of time spent following everyone
I miss making videos but it's soooo time consuming. I'd love to make more but I need to set aside a chunk of time. I really appreciate your support Dianne, but I understand the concern. I have the same challenge too. And quite frankly, I don't know how much longer it can be sustainable, to continue with this model of subscribing to one writer at a time.
Hi Jenna, I think the unfortunate truth is that everything exploits creativity and all these platforms exist for that sole purpose. The initial honeymoon is all part of the plan. I think it has always been this way, it is only more insidious now. I think we all must decide on owning that thing that no one can give us or take away…
Rene! Good to hear from you! And yes I think you're right, and I've quit most of them but I can't quit them all. Sad truth is that it provides me with some connection to the outside world and I still need that. 😕
The million dollar question!! I believe that we are what we tell ourselves we are. And that even within all of the constant change and fast-paced nature that we can't seem to rid ourselves of, we'll always crave the detail and authenticity that only long-form storytelling can present. We are ALLLLL deep, emotional beings, each with long-form stories waiting to be heard, and the more we see them in modern media, the more comfortable we'll feel sharing all of ourselves -- not just the highlights. Keep pushing the narrative!! I'm in your corner <3
Agreed! Whatever makes us feel best and continue to create things that excite and fulfill us 💛
❤️🙌
Eliza, thank you! I think, after having written and chewing on this for two days, I've concluded that I am all of these things! It's gotten blurred anyway, and continues to blur. Not sure why I spend so much energy grappling with it 😀
I’m right there with you, thinking a lot about how things have changed. When I started making music, it was about the craft - writing and performing. When I got into the business side, it became about selling, which I loved. If I marketed authentically, people came to my shows. Now it feels like no matter how you market yourself, if you’re not posting videos constantly, it’s like you don’t exist. Success isn’t measured by your growth as an artist anymore - it’s all about views, likes, and comments. The long-game, the development, the time it takes to nurture your craft - it's gone, replaced by the race for viral attention.
We’ve lost sight of sustainability. We’re pressured to keep up, but creativity takes time! In a world obsessed with now, we need to remember that great art needs patience.. X
Exactly. This churning out of content to feed the algorithms is sooooo unsustainable. No wonder there's so much burnout.
I spotted a grammatical typo. Oh well. This newsletter will probably always have typos and stray words I forget to delete. At least I didn't send it out with a typo in the email subject line. Yeah, I DID THAT once.
I have my Substack bookmarked so that I never have to look at my dashboard stats. I hate it so much.
I should really do that. Don’t know why I don’t - thanks for the reminder.
Micro-influencer is a good thing… a MI to an Influencer or Content Creator is like what a reduction sauce is to a pot of bland gravy. There is a lot of gravy, but everyone who eats it is not affected but a reduction? That hits…
I don't know if I want to be any kind of influencer. Like the way I didn't want to be a mommy blogger or a momtrepreneur or any of the number of things I've been called in the past 😅
Oh, this a million times. I hate labels and titles and such… I don’t want *know* if I influenced anyone to do, say or feel anything… it makes me feel… icky, for lack of a better word, to know I wrote something that made someone act on something. It’s ok if I did, but I don’t want to know about it… compliments makes me tense up and feel generally uncomfortable and then I get self-conscious and I don’t know what to do with my hands, including writing another piece. What do I do with this new-found superpower? I can’t risk it influencing stuff that isn’t … good…
I long for the days when we used to write something and never knew for sure how the it affected the reader… maybe they would write a letter to the editor or call the desk and scream at my editor, but rarely these things got passed along. If you got to keep writing stuff, in journalism or commercial copy or literature, etm… you knew you were doing ok.
Comments killed off that culture… now, too many writers chase influence, attention and engagement and sadly the people who write the checks think that equates to good writing or content or whatever the hell anyone wants to call the stuff between the first line of the lede and the last line of the kicker.
Maybe we just start calling it Stuff®️ instead of content 😀
(Now I think I’ll expand out this comment to a newsletter. See what you made me do!!! 😂😂😂)
I influenced you!!!!!
Interesting thought and musings...I don't have a definitive answer either to the "writer/content creator" except that the idea of a platform soley devoted to writing and writers was exactly what drew me to this platform in the first place (as I think it did you too). All I kept hearing was that Substack allowed you to concentrate on just the writing. As some who had no social media (I'd had a Twitter account years ago but closed it down) that really appealed to me, as both a reader and a writer. I really wish it had stayed that way...
It was refreshing! But not enough to sustain a business which I guess is a sad statement about writing in and of itself.
🙄
Writing is an art, how many times have we heard that? So why wouldn’t you call yourself a writer, an artist? I think we fall into categorizing more black and white than grays, and often it’s really about falling in between. But permit me to offer my perspective: I’m not a writer by any means. I have always felt grossly inadequate about anything I write. I abhorred having peer proofing, and only as an adult in education came to terms, gritted teeth, with allowing a trusted colleague to help me at times. She is an English teacher and my co-advisor and when I read her emails drafted to a parent telling them that their child is struggling or in the verge of failing something, and how she’s crafted the words, I am just gobsmacked at the beauty of it all. And that’s why a good or great book is so special. To me, writing, as you do, isn’t simply about putting the words together. It’s how you can composed them, have chosen just the right word (like a color), to weave together to create a sentiment (like texture). There are times I re-read a sentence or a passage because it’s is so gorgeously put together, like I’m running my eyes over the words and the letters and seeing how they fit together, like a picture almost.
So that’s just a very round about way of saying that your writing is art. You’re creating the visuals through your words. Keep at it. I’ve been reading your stuff since those days of SFD, when our kids were wee, and you have always crafted your words well, and I’m glad you’re back at it.
CG, always appreciate your perspective. And you must know by now that it's entirely up to me to overcome this internal struggle that I don't even understand. I don't regret going to art school, but it did something damaging to my ability to own my identity as a writer or an artist. I don't expect anyone to understand when I don't even understand it myself.
The hard part with “writer” or “artist” is that the sky is the limit. And unlike other professions there is no obvious baseline.
I suspect architecture school was as traumatic (or exponentially worse) than art school, but even though I’ll never be Jeanne Gang, I have earned the right to practice architecture in the state of Nevada.
Right! It gave you something tangible. Not sure what tangible value I got after being an art, then music major. At the end of the day, I came out alright and had a good/long/successful (I guess) career. I have to keep reminding myself that as my kids get nearer to entering the workforce. This job market, however, is really terrifying.
This is the same convo 10 years ago when fb bought instagram and all of the photographers (myself included) were wondering where we can just share our photography without it being infiltrated by capitalism. I fear it’s a slippery slope from here. If we start seeing ads we’ll probably know the answer.
Yup, we seem to go in cycles like this. Platforms owned by tech companies and tech bros. The sameness of everything. We've seen the playbook countless times.
If they add advertising this site is dead. They will have made a structural change that will irrevocably lead the site to ruin. But I hope that is a long time away, if ever.
Time will tell, but it nearly always seem to go that way eventually, even if it takes years.
Yep. I could see them doing something like small ads here and there, maybe on substacks that are free or even just in the notes feed! I feel like in today's world it's inevitable.
Oh, or like on instagram - you can agree to let ads show in your posts for other people and you get a (very small) cut from it. That might entice people that don't have a lot of paid subscribers...
Don't give them any ideas lol!
I'm so glad I'm not the only one feeling all of these things. We've both been online long enough to expect this, but it still kinda just sucks. I would like one place where my writing is the "product". Not the constant, dizzying marketing of the writing. I would also LOVE to not have to see the dashboard every time I write a post.
Yeah, it was to be expected. All the platforms converging to be the same thing. I just changed my bookmark to not load into my dashboard, just my posts. Don't know why I didn't do it sooner!
I hear you on algo/“content-creating” fatigue.
I’ve personally felt curious about optionality and diversity in terms of tooling, especially as a writer who also works in paint, sound, and film. Some people are more comfortable with one mode v. others and opening up to creators beyond just traditional newsletter writing, and evolution in general, has felt positive to me. Again, I empathize on pressure and noise fatigue; I recognize the pitfalls of choice and expansion.
On the overwhelm you mention wrt stats and feeling the pressure to be profitable: I hear you on this too. FWIW, I turn off all notifications for subs/unsubs and rarely look at stats :) I don’t rely on Substack to pay the bills so I realize I’ve the privilege of writing here purely for my own voice, and I’ve been grateful for amplification and connections. I think I've also grown to regard conflicts between business needs/interest v. user ideals/interest more pragmatically than emotionally (not saying this is good or bad, but might give more color to my thoughts.)
I’m genuinely curious what you expect (different from “prefer,” though interested in this too) from a for-profit platform such as this, in our time? Do you think your initial reactions are partly due to a natural resistsance to change? (I know you’re no stranger to this btw given your own background as a designer.) How do you hope these conversations move us forward (or elsewhere)?
Hopefully this is an interesting contribution to the discussion!
Coleen, it's not a surprise, it was expected. I don't even know why the public vent, other than the frustration of all these platforms moving in the same direction and fighting for the same piece of the creator pie. And yes, maybe it's because I'm at a personal point in my life where I don't want to do everything anymore. As a designer I leaned on my willingness and interest to put on so many roles and hats—sound design, UX, UI, research, branding, data viz, a touch of coding, blah blah, etc. When we owned our biz it was useful and fortunate that I could do everything we needed, but it all lead to burnout. In trying to figure out what I want to do creatively, I've been eliminating things one by one, and so I guess the rub for me personally is that these platforms are nagging reminders that we could do it all—if we want. And I don't know that I want that anymore? I'm tired lol.
Jenna - the pervasive theme from everyone I’ve spoken to lately is, “I am just so god damn tired.” It’s ALL too much. We have to be very selective about what we give our energy to, because we all seem pretty tapped out.
This 💯. Exactly.
A bunch of years ago, Melissa Urban was talking about how if you run, you’re a runner. If you take photos, you’re a photographer. You don’t have to professionally be that thing or make money from it. If you love it and do it often so it’s a part of you, claim it. I’ve taken photos for 25ish years and I still struggle to say I’m a photographer because it’s not my livelihood. I think for women, especially, we’re taught to play down our talents if they’re not making us (or someone else) money. You are quite obviously an artist, a writer, and many other beautiful things. And you’re not saying that to place yourself above others, you are just describing what makes you tick. Do what you do for the joy, the release, the challenge… and the rest doesn’t matter. Your people find you when you lean into your authentic self - I did!!
All of this makes sense! We are what we do, regardless of whether it's our livelihood. My issue is just an internal battle, and I guess that's why it was/is easier to identify as a designer because that was my job. It's hard to place value on something that doesn't have transactional value, at least in a monetary sense. But it shouldn't be so hard when it has value if it's something we enjoy or love. I'll get around to it eventually ☺️
I've had this same question--what is substack, exactly? Maybe I've been wondering because I am spending more time on it, lately, but I haven't delved into many of the new features and I prefer this site & the app as a place to read. It's kind of like a huge, quirky magazine--which is how the internet felt in early 00s. I like the platform best as a place to find essays and reviews and freeform/personal blogging like yours. I think it's generally good for criticism and for critics. I like seeing people work out their ideas and write about books and movies and I like that people are discussing older books on here, not just new releases. In term of monetizing, I think it's probably best for columnists with a particular area of expertise or people who are running mini magazines. I do wonder about sustainability for many writers on here because there is pressure to produce more. I am rambling a bit but just chiming in to agree that the site/app seem to be evolving quickly and it's hard to say what it is exactly, because people use their substacks for so many different things.
I agree with everything you've written, Hannah. This is why I like it too — the personal essays in particular. Also agree about the monetization, even though I am monetized. I don't have one area of expertise and maybe that is why it's still uncomfortable and why I question the value of it all. Not sure if you've seen it, but shortly after I sent this, we got a newsletter from Hamish that explains what Substack now is!
I am so not interested in seeing or doing more videos. I love words. I tried doing audio on my own Substack but it was a lot more work, so...no thanks. Maybe I'll go back to audio again but not video.
Let's see how it evolves, but there's a strong writer community here. I'm hoping there is room for all.
I think so!
I’m still figuring out Substack. Thanks for sharing your insight.
Also I love your drawing.
Thank you Crystal! I get few comments on the drawings so I always appreciate them ☺️
Resonating so much with nearly everything you said here. I just want to write without thinking about what kind of “content” it’s going to be perceived as. I want to write, not curate my life.
"I want to write, not curate my life"
Oh, this ❤️. So very tired of a curated life.
For what it’s worth I’m a paid subscriber because I like reading your musings. I really enjoyed your you tube videos but I also realize how much work goes into that. Your drawings are wonderful too but your thoughts and commentary are the reason I subscribe. I don’t expect to get content for free but am getting overwhelmed by all the Substack creators and their various levels of subscriptions. I need to be realistic about both my budget and the amount of time spent following everyone
I miss making videos but it's soooo time consuming. I'd love to make more but I need to set aside a chunk of time. I really appreciate your support Dianne, but I understand the concern. I have the same challenge too. And quite frankly, I don't know how much longer it can be sustainable, to continue with this model of subscribing to one writer at a time.
Hi Jenna, I think the unfortunate truth is that everything exploits creativity and all these platforms exist for that sole purpose. The initial honeymoon is all part of the plan. I think it has always been this way, it is only more insidious now. I think we all must decide on owning that thing that no one can give us or take away…
Rene! Good to hear from you! And yes I think you're right, and I've quit most of them but I can't quit them all. Sad truth is that it provides me with some connection to the outside world and I still need that. 😕