The Making Of: This Newsletter

It's a time for new beginnings....

Reading time: About 3 minutes

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Happy New Year, my friends! 💖🥂 My warmest wishes to you. May 2023 bring you maximum happiness, love, and well-being.

This e-mail should be your January story delivery, but alas, it is not. I’m terribly sorry to disappoint. Between moving into the new house, a very busy trip to visit family & friends in SoCal, and catching Covid on the way back from it, there was just no time in December to put together this month’s story.

When will a January story appear? That....is not a straightforward question.

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I committed to a story each month only because Substack kept sending me emails that insisted that I must commit to a solid offering and schedule and deliver on both. If I didn’t, my newsletter would be a failure. I didn’t want to fail!

It was only later that I realized that “failure” in this context meant “I’ll never monetize my newsletter and Substack won’t get their cut of my profits.” And since monetizing this newsletter was never my plan....wait, what was my plan again?

The plan was to post free stories on my newsletter for all to read, because possibly the best part of writing is getting to share it. But the plan was also to submit other stories to magazines and anthologies, because then I’d get to share even more work to even more people. So I’d get the joys of sharing to people directly and of having work accepted for publication. And also some money, eventually, which would make my financial planner super happy.

But I’ve been struggling over the last three months trying to figure out how to divvy up my writing time to create a story for the newsletter and to create a story to submit to paying publications. So far I have managed to get a story done for you but never to submit. Which means I have like three stories in various stages of doneness that I keep having to stop working on to rush and get the newsletter story done.

I stumbled across a post today that has articulated a number of things that I’ve had in mind--how social media is over, how do we actually connect in a meaningful way online, how big disruptive things like AI are changing everything again, how we’re all searching for new ways and new ideas.

Here’s my exhortation:

Let 2023 be a year of experimentation and invention!

Let it come from the edges, the margins, the provinces, the marshes!

THIS MEANS YOU!

I am thinking specifically of experimentation around “ways of relating online”. I’ve used that phrase before, and I acknowledge it might be a bit obscure … but, for me, it captures the rich overlap of publishing and networking, media and conviviality. It’s this domain that was so decisively captured in the 2010s, and it’s this domain that is newly up for grabs.

It is 2003 again. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram haven’t been invented yet … except, it’s also 2023, and they have, so you can learn from their rise and ruin.

Robin Sloan

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There are some authors on Substack who love writing on Substack. So far, I have found the technology experience smooth, but as good as sending out a story to you feels, it doesn’t feel like love. I don’t think it’s the platform, but that I haven’t found the best way to use it for me.

Going forward, what does this mean? I don’t know. Experimentation! Invention! Nailing my writing process down better. Trying things until this little corner of the internet works for you and me, so that we both love what’s happening.

Let’s say this: I will have something for you on the 1st of every month in 2023. We’re going to have to explore what that thing will be together. I hope you don’t mind coming along for a little ride!

So grateful for you all!!

💖,

Elnora