Around Two Months In... and how are we doing?
This Substack began as a bit of a pipe dream... and I'm convinced that the situation will remain.
When I first posted on ‘the site formerly known as Twitter’ about creating a Substack, it was met with interest. I felt very fortunate for that to be the case, and I was convinced that I’d be able to keep it up. (And before you read on further in potential despair, let me assure you that this will continue being the newsletter of sorts that you expected, but all great things have a few teething issues!)
Now, perhaps my approach of ‘trying to get something out every week’ has fallen somewhat to the wayside: but worry not, the whole thing certainly won’t be! I’ve already learnt a few things from this early beginning stage, namely:
Substack is actually a very good writing platform. This isn’t inherently a surprise, but I hadn’t really looked into it prior to it having been mentioned - you know who you are! - and from following various other writers, I have to admit that it is an excellent means of (a) getting your writing ‘out there’ in some form, and (b) being able to keep up to date with things in a 50/50 active/passive sense. I can receive an email and skim through it (as I do when reading the writings of Cariad Lloyd) or develop interest more acutely and more in-depth-ly (as with Sam Hogg’s excellent British Diplomacy Tracker. I mean, just from the fact I can put in links into an email that gets sent to emails… the whole thing is quite impressive.
It’s completely fine to jump headfirst into something but to still take a bit of time to warm up. I don’t want to get too philosophical (after all, I’m a linguist by nature, not a philosopher), but something has to be said about the perception of ‘time that we’re spending on a project’ versus ‘time that is generally happening in the world’. That is to say, when I initially stated that I wanted to do “a weekly newsletter about everything languages and culture”, I perhaps didn’t quite think enough about the fact that a week is a very short amount of time and it is much harder than you might expect to find inspiration from yourself to talk about that regularly. It’s one of the reasons I’m becoming more and more convinced over time that content creation really can be considered a full time job for a decent proportion of ‘content creators’. There is definitely the chaff out there — but it can also be pretty neat to realise the wheat. Rhyme probably intended. So that’s a slight teething issue, sure, but it’s also a great stage from which to develop and refine!
There is no shame in admitting the hurdles. Much like the above, you don’t necessary realise what the hurdles are until you encounter them. Perhaps I’ll have to travel to a local library or café to write future newsletters to keep it regularly. Maybe I’ll have to do one every week but keep it shorter. Maybe I’ll have to give myself only an hour of writing and then, no matter how it looks, publish it. (That feels a bit last-resorty for the perfectionist in me.) Fundamentally though, there is absolutely no shame in admitting you have come across hurdles, and it is awesome (in the original meaning) to be able to acknowledge that and find ways to develop from them.
I would say these are three crucial things that I’ve learnt in this initial stage. It will definitely develop into a weekly newsletter, it will definitely become far more regular than it has been, and it will definitely be something that I can ensure you will have appreciated and felt confident subscribing to. So thank you for the continual support, however that might manifest!
Definitely.