I am so grateful for the connection you drew between the commons and this virtual commons. One of my dearest wishes is to have more community in my life, and this newish (to me, anyway) platform feels a little bit like coming out of my cabin, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, and finding a field of new friends to play with. I haven't made the leap to paid subscriptions (and don't have any kind of plan beyond just writing the next damn essay), but I am about to offer an IRL writing circle, inspired by a request from a Substack reader. That's a way of connecting I hadn't expected to experience through Substack, and I'm excited about it.
Thank you so much, Hannah! I like that image of the platform being like coming out of a cabin and finding new friends. 🧡 And people do seem to be experimenting with all sorts of new ways to connect and exchange ideas and practice. I'm seeing all sorts of different proposals and ideas, like yours, and Elizabeth Aquino's for readings followed by a Zoom meeting to talk about the book. I love that people are diving into the potentials of these ideas!
This was a wonderful essay that resonated a great deal. I wish I could write sooner to be more actively a part of these conversations, but it always takes so long even just to catch up. And to your own theme above, there are already so many great comments that I'd rather see what other people are saying and digest some of that first. But this idea of writing as community, by way of reading and commenting as community, is very close to my heart. Like many, I struggle with severe writer's block (or thinker's block) and rarely produce much of anything. Usually it is only in *informal* mode and as part of a spontaneous dialogue - blogs like this, an email exchange with a friend, a live discussion or seminar - that I can reliably write or convey substantive thoughts at all.
Maybe I'll come back and respond more eventually, but just wanted to say I think what you're talking about here is super important. It's no accident that Substack and other platforms are becoming a "thing" these days: many people are hungry for community, in a world that has less embodied community than ever. And "community" shares half of its letters with "communication."
But as someone who's been an editor for many people working on major projects, that can be the next best thing to writing yourself, to be able to participate in someone else's unfolding thinking and writing process and (if lucky) even contribute to that process. I like the image of all your readers as de facto co-editors.
These conversations keep going, as you know! And you're right, I think -- people are hungry for community, and I also think hungry to slow down, to not have to absorb so many hot takes and quips all the time. Or maybe that's just me.
It's interesting what you say about informal mode and spontaneous dialogue conveying thought -- I often think that most of what I write at least starts out as a letter to someone, even if it doesn't end that way. Writing letters might be my favorite form of writing, and I wonder if that says something about the whole approach I'm talking about here, and you are, too. Because writing letters is responsive, which is why I like them so much.
I agree about editing! Most of my work as a copy editor is on textbooks, so there isn't much of that, but I do take it into workshopping colleagues' essays and so on when we exchange things. And I really, really enjoy it. It's such a different way of looking at thinking and writing and how ideas work their way out into the wider world.
You constantly surprise me, Antonia. I'm not sure why I did not anticipate your struggle with the commons and the ownership of your own words and ideas, but once suggested, it can never be un-suggested. I'll be mulling over it for a while, I'm sure.
I think working with a team is the best way to go, period. I've heard so many successful writers talk about the benefit of getting in situations where you have to work on a deadline, and are accountable to someone. My best writing lessons have been through working with editors, and a significant portion of the development of my last project was just talking to friends and random bystanders about the subject until the flow of the narrative started to get worked out in my mind. None of those people showed up in the credits of the story, even though I probably would not have been able to do it without them. Movies have extensive rules of credit, but many supporting roles in book projects only show up in the "Acknowledgements", a back-closet I wonder about every time I see it.
And, finally.... I am deeply frustrated that the publishing world is so gate-kept that there is precious little teaching and advice about the business of writing. It is baffling that there is an ecosystem of real estate investing podcasts where people tell all and get into the gory details of how much they spent and made and what systems worked and didn't, but writers are ON THEIR OWN to figure it out. Just the other day, on the How I Built This podcast with the Hank and John Green, Guy casually threw out that 2-3% of any book sells more than 5000 copies in a year. A guy at church gives me a copy of a kind of memoir he made, and when I respond with surprise, he says nonchalantly, "Oh, on Amazon, it costs about as much as a greeting card to print one of these, so I just give them out." What the heck? Why can't we crack this open and talk candidly about how it all works?
Always glad to provide a bit of surprise! I've been mulling over this essay topic for months. Not sure if I got much of anywhere but it was a really good process for me to even think of how this might be approached differently.
It would be great, I think, if it were clearer to readers how many people are involved in making a piece of writing, of whatever form, ready for them to sink into, enjoy, etc. I might be also slightly biased since I work as a copy editor and fact-checker, but as a writer it would be nice to not be stuck with the sole credit for things I had a lot of help with. And for friends -- I've got one environmental lawyer friend with whom conversations are often the groundwork for an essay. Especially on property law, she's suggested most of the books I first read, and sometimes it feels like my writing is an ongoing conversation with her. (She used to work at DEQ in Helena but had to move to Oregon for her husband's job.)
The number I've heard for books is actually only 2% sell more than 2000 copies. But I got that from the DOJ anti-trust case last year. Book publishing is so tight-lipped about it all but it's true that very few books sell even 2000. I don't think the industry wants people to know because there's so much mystique about publishing a book and books themselves, as well as writers, that I think a lot of the business model is based on people not knowing the economic realities. Writing about this is one of my backlog of ideas, but I don't really have much new to add to it. I'm with you, though. I think people should just start talking about the realities! It almost feels like the publishing industry functions by extracting writers' starry-eyed hopes and dreams about sales and rewards, and that's saddening and frustrating.
Thanks, Nia. This resonates. First, hooray for the editors. With so much writing now online, uncurated and unedited, good editors* are treasures and in short supply.
I similarly value writing here in the commons. I hadn’t expected Substack to be this much a community of writers and readers (as trite as that may seem). But it is — and I like it a lot. As I write, it helps me think even more WITH my readers. Maybe Substack isn’t all about getting the most subscribers, but more so the right subscribers.
Having read you for years, but not quite knowing you that well, I’ll only add that, yes, as you wrote above in this wonderful essay, you yourself don’t fully own what you’re writing on Substack. I dunno — when I read your posts I see them as yours, reflective of you — to be sure, a product of your mind and environment and other influences, but on the whole intrinsically you. There’s a lot of value in that.
Whatever the case, I’m grateful to be here as well with you — and your readers.
* I’d be remiss not to mention my editor at The Boston Globe, Kelly Horan, who is ruthless and yet respectful, and whom I trust more than anyone with my prose.
That is a very kind observation! It's hard to learn to just trust your own voice (or even find it initially), but my book editor was pretty firm about it, sending back chapters all the time with direction to stop quoting researchers and scientists so much and trust my own voice. She was absolutely right, though it feels so much safer to quote experts! But the voice really *is* so much of it, and I realized after a while that it's the thing I rely on most, knowing it's there (hopefully). Sometimes my head gets too crowded with online stuff and others' work and I feel like I'm losing my voice, and have to go away for a while. (And there are some writers I avoid reading when I'm working on something big because their voices are so strong and individual that I lose my own in reading them.) I'm sure you know the feeling! Your writing has a particular voice that I always look forward to reading.
I didn't expect Substack to become a kind of community, either. I'm not even sure the founders did, though I can see it's something they intentionally encourage. I hope they keep building the site carefully and don't try to mess around with things too much, and realize the value of what a lot of people find here.
I have only published one or two pieces with the Boston Globe -- family travel things, a long time ago -- and it was a good experience! The editors I've learned most from have been Pam Weintraub and Brigid Haines at Aeon, and Jennifer Niesslein and Stephanie Wilkinson when they were both at Brain, Child and later when Jennifer started Full Grown People. Ruthless yet respectful is exactly it.
I’d go as far as to say that nothing, I write comes from “me“ exclusively. Where do the ideas come from? From the ether? I’m constantly inspired by other writers. And I probably couldn’t even tell you a lot of the time which pieces I might’ve gotten from where. That inspiration is a part of our common energy too. It always bothered me in the corporate world when someone would take an idea and patent it so no one else could use it. that is such bullshit. And don’t get me started on the pharmaceuticals that take government and charitable money for research and development, and then patent the drug and charge consumers a fortune.
And. We all have to put food on the table and in heat our homes. The act of writing is a sacred act. We each follow the path as best we can and who knows?
My mom said that to me once in passing many, many years ago. I think I was still a teenager! She said something along the lines of "ideas don't belong to anyone" and how ideas could just be wandering around and be picked up by anyone who passes by.
Which is different from full stories themselves, which I see as belonging to the people who experienced them, or sacred stories belonging to groups of people, for example. I feel like I should have said that somewhere in the piece but it's also kind of a different topic. There is a lot I don't write about because those stories are not mine to tell.
Yeah, the patents. Just ... so much in there that drives me absolutely mad. Let's start with pharmaceuticals and go for seeds and so much else ...
Who knows, indeed. (I heard a great line from a guy a while back who was quoting someone else I can't remember the name of -- speaking of ideas coming from everywhere -- that was, "The secret to the Great American Novel is family money.")
Was there ever a "full story? I have never even dreamed one like that. We can put a period to it, or turn a page, but even Gurdjieff in his work :ALL AND EVERYTHING, knew it was not literally true, though in a sense he was finishing something. And now the FOREST meander will begin, and I hope the forest will rub off the delightful, captivating quality of your post and the waves in response from all the friends.
Maybe "full story" isn't the right phrase. What I mean is, there are sacred stories that outsiders shouldn't tell or appropriate, but there are also stories that belong to other people that I wouldn't dream of telling. Like there are horrible tragedies that have happened to people where I live, people I'm friends with, and those are things I wouldn't take on as my own to tell. But also many things that have happened in my own family that have affected me but, again, I'm not the center of it. It's not "my" story to tell. (I think this is particularly important when children are involved, but really anyone.) Another nonfiction writer might think nothing of telling these stories, but to me it's very important not to grab for them as if they're something that's mine to share.
Yes, I get that for sure about stories vs ideas. Thanks for clarifying - I hadn't thought of that and it makes a big difference. And yes - seriously, the idea that artists should be "starving" needs to go. Artists make a VITAL contribution to our society, as evidenced by what we wouldn't want to be without. The way our culture pays for things is just wrong on every level. I mean, even art becomes worth more after the artist dies - wtf?!?
There's a quote about art attributed to Winston Churchill that turns out to be apocryphal, but it also turns out that he did defend the arts as vital to society: "... It lights the path and links the thought of one generation with another, and in the realm of price holds its own in intrinsic value with an ingot of gold. Evidently we are in the presence of a mystery which strikes down to the deepest foundations of human genius and of human glory. Ill fares the race which fails to salute the arts with the reverence and delight which are their due." (from this source: https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/the-arts-what-are-we-fighting-for/)
"When I first heard this, I thought,"That song sounds like something I should have stayed up all night and written!.." (John Prine, after hearing Blaze Foley"s 'Clay Pigeons.')
You are so right about the roles of editors, and how often they are overlooked.
Brent and I are lucky that we have live-in editors, although having your spouse edit your work is a special kind of stress.
And I love the words about interacting with readers via comments/personal messages -- which presents both the best and worst of the internet. The worst is places that aren't moderated like much of Reddit or Facebook.
But places that are moderated? Man, that's a great way to interact with folks.
Which is part of why I like Substack so much. I think we've had zero negative interactions in almost two years on the platform. Instead, it's been getting really constructive feedback and getting to know folks.
I admire you two for doing that. My spouse doesn't read almost any of my work, for which I'm kind of grateful!
It's weird actually watching my kids getting old enough to interact more online, and seeing how easily they ignore the more toxic parts of it. Reminds me of something Pico Iyer said in a talk once when someone asked him what humans' relationship with all this digital tech would be like in 100 years and he said, "They'll have figured it out." By which he obviously didn't mean that they'd have everything figured out, but that humans adapt and whatever relationship they have with all of this, it'll be normal for them and they'll have all new problems to worry about.
It's not at all clear to this wrangler that what has been lost is a subject that can be "figured out" by minds navigating by the same old crumbled map.
It's great that they can ignore it and I guess I've gotten better at it. Some of our content appears on a publication's website whose name I won't mention here. And when they post the content on their Facebook page, the comments are often incredibly toxic and I won't go anywhere near it.
Yeah, I learned immediately to never bother with looking at comments on places like Washington Post or The Atlantic. Having no moderation is just no good.
I hope he is, too!
I meant to add to that, that of course my kids aren't producing much online yet, and that's where you wade into the toxicity. My son was writing stories on WattPad at one point, which was cool and he got encouraging comments there. But we've yet to really get into "being online" in a way that's opens them up to more. Will just have to take it one step at a time.
I think maybe the interesting (and great!) thing about this platform is that it generally does feel like the words and essays are the author's creation but then the thing is posted and it becomes something that we're all communing about and around. It's fun! I read things and sometimes the words take me some place in line with the topic, and sometimes the words spin me off into another direction. Either way, there seems to be a community in the comments (isn't that a dizzying and weird thing???) ready to run with the author AND the comments in a generally wholesome way.
What a fun way to look at it! And of course "communing about and around" makes me think of capering and your own "Scramblin' Scribble" idea.
Yeah, there's something about the comment threads that seems to help people form connections of ideas, at least. I like that. I don't know if it will last forever, and it's not true for everyone (thinking of Elle's comment below where some of the feedback is less helpful), but so far? But it's also the case that I personally like dialogue and discourse. I actually don't talk much in person, so I guess I save it all for places like this. 😂
The long dormant Scramblin' Scribble! I write ~10,000 words a week on average, but unfortunately few to none of them are for my own enjoyment or edification. That's actually why you haven't seen me pop up in here as much recently - although I'll typically read, I just don't have either the time or the bandwidth to contribute much to the conversation and my personality is one that if I don't have anything that I want to say then I just don't say much of anything.
A thing that I've noticed around here is that most of the newsletters attract people who want to engage under the ground rules laid out (explicitly or implicitly) by the author themselves. You are not an asshole and you engage with the people here with respect and curiosity, and those virtues are reciprocated accordingly. Occasionally a newsletter will gain a critical mass and some folks with show their entire ass in the comments, but even then I've observed some decent peer-correction. While I hope you have a subscriber base that financially supports the life you want to live, I selfishly hope that it isn't so broad that the jabronis start bleed in from your Glenns Greenwalds of the Substack world.
I enjoy this second paragraph so much I can't even tell you. I might get a T-shirt that just says, "Not an Asshole." (I enjoy the guy who does the Nordic Animism YouTube videos, and he made a T-shirt last year or so that says "Don't Be a Dick" but in Nordic runes, which I got for my brother-in-law. Just the best. Now my son's nabbed one and wears it to school, which I've warned him he might get in trouble for if anyone asks what it says. But whatever.) Definitely, yes, avoiding the Glenn Greenwald et. als of the Substack world. No interest in that kind of dialogue.
And I very much appreciate the sentiment of not saying anything if there isn't much to say. I wish more humans in the world were like that! One thing I'm constantly saying to my kids is, "It's okay not to talk." Like we can just go for a walk and enjoy the world together. It's okay!
Beautifully written as always and it is a topic Ive been pondering on for a while. There is an implicit form of ‘collective labour’ in how ideas fall onto a writer’s page - and the most compelling articles are the ones that dance with the constructive and sometimes conflicting tensions that shape our voice. As you’ve alluded to, there is no craft without graft.
It is *delightful* to think about it as a dance, especially with those tensions in mind. I definitely think of your writing as something that prompts more ideas and pondering.
As always, I read your words and they are both incredibly calming and reassuring, like listening to someone explain something I've felt for years but never quite put into words, and also, EXTREMELY ENERGISING because they make me want to leap up and write a 20,000 word response. And I think that's part of the joy of this writing-commons approach. In Seth Godin's phrasing, we infect each other with the idea virus (it's funny how that analogy is no longer as appealing as it once was), or perhaps we're like musicians jamming off each other, finding deeper layers of the melody.
Or maybe: it's just how great writing happens, Mike. Stop making everything a metaphor.
I feel the same way as you do about writing in my Substack - with the knowledge I'm relying completely on the original scientific research of others, so even if I tried to claim "ownership" in some way, I really couldn't. (Which is why when something of mine suddenly reaches a wider audience and I get feedback like "this is amazing, thanks, random English guy" I feel like saying "thank you, I'll pass it on to the people doing the actual work!!!" and then present them with a hundred-entry bibliography).
I also feel like you do about traditional publishing. I'd love to have a publishing deal! But I wouldn't want to adapt something that deserves to exist elsewhere, because that's where it can be weird and risky and commons-y enough to flourish. It feels like an unspoken loyalty to what the work deserves, and from my (totally inexperienced) perspective, tradpub feels like a very different beast: much more risk-averse, much more grounded in marketing systems that have been around for decades and that are looking increasingly dusty and over-safe at least to my eyes, and operating on a work-cycle lasting *years*, which horrifies me in the same way when I was a freelancer I could never understand why the biggest publications were the ones that took the longest to pay me. (With a *check*. WTF.)
>>"I told this person that I wouldn’t be averse to the idea, if a publisher were interested, but there’d have to be something in it for all the people who’d already been supporting this work, financially or otherwise."
This really got to me. It's how I feel too, so much at this point. The kind of gratitude for my readers that makes me blink a bit faster. And - I never want the folk who have invested their time and money in me to feel like it was a bad bet. Whatever the finish-line is of the projects I've invited them into, I want to meet them there. I want us all to cross it together. So - YES. This. Thank you so much for putting it into words, because now I can see how important it is to me on so many levels.
I'm stopping this comment now because I'll write another 19,300 words, just you watch me. But I may come back.
Bravo. I love the way you're approaching all this, Antonia.
(And thank you for the kind shout-out! But I don't think that's my idea at all, I probably stole it! See: "even if I tried to claim "ownership" in some way, I really couldn't". 😄)
I really wish I didn't feel like "book publishing is broken" were such a truth, but I've seen some things happen over the last couple of years that really make me feel like book publishing is broken. (Including the anti-trust trial in the U.S. last year against two of the big publishers trying to merge. That was a ride. I still plan to write about that at some point because it left me thinking, on a daily basis, that the heads of publishing houses want everyone to think that a book's success is down to magical elves or something.) Which is sad because it doesn't have to be, and -- thinking about Elle's comments here -- a project where you go away for a couple years or more and really have time and space to think deeply and eventually emerge with a finished narrative really is a different thing. We do need book publishing to figure itself out because, again, otherwise it's only people with private means of support who can afford to do that. Plus book publishing is full of a lot of really great people who care about books! They deserve better than what seems to be happening in the industry, as do writers.
I know what you mean about giving credit to people doing the actual work. That's always really important to me, maybe even more so when you see it not happening elsewhere. It did create a stumbling block in my walking book, which I hadn't expected. My editor kept sending things back to me telling me to use fewer quotes and references and trust my own voice more, and I knew what she meant by that but I kept going, "But this wasn't my idea! I can't claim it as my own!" It was hard (and still is) figuring out how to write things in your own voice while also giving credit and reference to people whose ideas or research you're relying on.
Because you do have to create a narrative that people want to read, and you won't generally succeed at that without using your own voice and by constantly referring people elsewhere. And I, at least, want to do that not so people have to read my work specifically, but because I owe it to the subjects I'm writing about to help people find a way to care.
Nia, you are wordy and it really works for you and all of us! Not a simple task.
You know better than most where I get it from!
I am so grateful for the connection you drew between the commons and this virtual commons. One of my dearest wishes is to have more community in my life, and this newish (to me, anyway) platform feels a little bit like coming out of my cabin, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, and finding a field of new friends to play with. I haven't made the leap to paid subscriptions (and don't have any kind of plan beyond just writing the next damn essay), but I am about to offer an IRL writing circle, inspired by a request from a Substack reader. That's a way of connecting I hadn't expected to experience through Substack, and I'm excited about it.
Thank you so much, Hannah! I like that image of the platform being like coming out of a cabin and finding new friends. 🧡 And people do seem to be experimenting with all sorts of new ways to connect and exchange ideas and practice. I'm seeing all sorts of different proposals and ideas, like yours, and Elizabeth Aquino's for readings followed by a Zoom meeting to talk about the book. I love that people are diving into the potentials of these ideas!
Beautiful
Thank you, Mark! 🧡
This was a wonderful essay that resonated a great deal. I wish I could write sooner to be more actively a part of these conversations, but it always takes so long even just to catch up. And to your own theme above, there are already so many great comments that I'd rather see what other people are saying and digest some of that first. But this idea of writing as community, by way of reading and commenting as community, is very close to my heart. Like many, I struggle with severe writer's block (or thinker's block) and rarely produce much of anything. Usually it is only in *informal* mode and as part of a spontaneous dialogue - blogs like this, an email exchange with a friend, a live discussion or seminar - that I can reliably write or convey substantive thoughts at all.
Maybe I'll come back and respond more eventually, but just wanted to say I think what you're talking about here is super important. It's no accident that Substack and other platforms are becoming a "thing" these days: many people are hungry for community, in a world that has less embodied community than ever. And "community" shares half of its letters with "communication."
But as someone who's been an editor for many people working on major projects, that can be the next best thing to writing yourself, to be able to participate in someone else's unfolding thinking and writing process and (if lucky) even contribute to that process. I like the image of all your readers as de facto co-editors.
These conversations keep going, as you know! And you're right, I think -- people are hungry for community, and I also think hungry to slow down, to not have to absorb so many hot takes and quips all the time. Or maybe that's just me.
It's interesting what you say about informal mode and spontaneous dialogue conveying thought -- I often think that most of what I write at least starts out as a letter to someone, even if it doesn't end that way. Writing letters might be my favorite form of writing, and I wonder if that says something about the whole approach I'm talking about here, and you are, too. Because writing letters is responsive, which is why I like them so much.
I agree about editing! Most of my work as a copy editor is on textbooks, so there isn't much of that, but I do take it into workshopping colleagues' essays and so on when we exchange things. And I really, really enjoy it. It's such a different way of looking at thinking and writing and how ideas work their way out into the wider world.
You constantly surprise me, Antonia. I'm not sure why I did not anticipate your struggle with the commons and the ownership of your own words and ideas, but once suggested, it can never be un-suggested. I'll be mulling over it for a while, I'm sure.
I think working with a team is the best way to go, period. I've heard so many successful writers talk about the benefit of getting in situations where you have to work on a deadline, and are accountable to someone. My best writing lessons have been through working with editors, and a significant portion of the development of my last project was just talking to friends and random bystanders about the subject until the flow of the narrative started to get worked out in my mind. None of those people showed up in the credits of the story, even though I probably would not have been able to do it without them. Movies have extensive rules of credit, but many supporting roles in book projects only show up in the "Acknowledgements", a back-closet I wonder about every time I see it.
And, finally.... I am deeply frustrated that the publishing world is so gate-kept that there is precious little teaching and advice about the business of writing. It is baffling that there is an ecosystem of real estate investing podcasts where people tell all and get into the gory details of how much they spent and made and what systems worked and didn't, but writers are ON THEIR OWN to figure it out. Just the other day, on the How I Built This podcast with the Hank and John Green, Guy casually threw out that 2-3% of any book sells more than 5000 copies in a year. A guy at church gives me a copy of a kind of memoir he made, and when I respond with surprise, he says nonchalantly, "Oh, on Amazon, it costs about as much as a greeting card to print one of these, so I just give them out." What the heck? Why can't we crack this open and talk candidly about how it all works?
Always glad to provide a bit of surprise! I've been mulling over this essay topic for months. Not sure if I got much of anywhere but it was a really good process for me to even think of how this might be approached differently.
It would be great, I think, if it were clearer to readers how many people are involved in making a piece of writing, of whatever form, ready for them to sink into, enjoy, etc. I might be also slightly biased since I work as a copy editor and fact-checker, but as a writer it would be nice to not be stuck with the sole credit for things I had a lot of help with. And for friends -- I've got one environmental lawyer friend with whom conversations are often the groundwork for an essay. Especially on property law, she's suggested most of the books I first read, and sometimes it feels like my writing is an ongoing conversation with her. (She used to work at DEQ in Helena but had to move to Oregon for her husband's job.)
The number I've heard for books is actually only 2% sell more than 2000 copies. But I got that from the DOJ anti-trust case last year. Book publishing is so tight-lipped about it all but it's true that very few books sell even 2000. I don't think the industry wants people to know because there's so much mystique about publishing a book and books themselves, as well as writers, that I think a lot of the business model is based on people not knowing the economic realities. Writing about this is one of my backlog of ideas, but I don't really have much new to add to it. I'm with you, though. I think people should just start talking about the realities! It almost feels like the publishing industry functions by extracting writers' starry-eyed hopes and dreams about sales and rewards, and that's saddening and frustrating.
Thanks, Nia. This resonates. First, hooray for the editors. With so much writing now online, uncurated and unedited, good editors* are treasures and in short supply.
I similarly value writing here in the commons. I hadn’t expected Substack to be this much a community of writers and readers (as trite as that may seem). But it is — and I like it a lot. As I write, it helps me think even more WITH my readers. Maybe Substack isn’t all about getting the most subscribers, but more so the right subscribers.
Having read you for years, but not quite knowing you that well, I’ll only add that, yes, as you wrote above in this wonderful essay, you yourself don’t fully own what you’re writing on Substack. I dunno — when I read your posts I see them as yours, reflective of you — to be sure, a product of your mind and environment and other influences, but on the whole intrinsically you. There’s a lot of value in that.
Whatever the case, I’m grateful to be here as well with you — and your readers.
* I’d be remiss not to mention my editor at The Boston Globe, Kelly Horan, who is ruthless and yet respectful, and whom I trust more than anyone with my prose.
That is a very kind observation! It's hard to learn to just trust your own voice (or even find it initially), but my book editor was pretty firm about it, sending back chapters all the time with direction to stop quoting researchers and scientists so much and trust my own voice. She was absolutely right, though it feels so much safer to quote experts! But the voice really *is* so much of it, and I realized after a while that it's the thing I rely on most, knowing it's there (hopefully). Sometimes my head gets too crowded with online stuff and others' work and I feel like I'm losing my voice, and have to go away for a while. (And there are some writers I avoid reading when I'm working on something big because their voices are so strong and individual that I lose my own in reading them.) I'm sure you know the feeling! Your writing has a particular voice that I always look forward to reading.
I didn't expect Substack to become a kind of community, either. I'm not even sure the founders did, though I can see it's something they intentionally encourage. I hope they keep building the site carefully and don't try to mess around with things too much, and realize the value of what a lot of people find here.
I have only published one or two pieces with the Boston Globe -- family travel things, a long time ago -- and it was a good experience! The editors I've learned most from have been Pam Weintraub and Brigid Haines at Aeon, and Jennifer Niesslein and Stephanie Wilkinson when they were both at Brain, Child and later when Jennifer started Full Grown People. Ruthless yet respectful is exactly it.
I’d go as far as to say that nothing, I write comes from “me“ exclusively. Where do the ideas come from? From the ether? I’m constantly inspired by other writers. And I probably couldn’t even tell you a lot of the time which pieces I might’ve gotten from where. That inspiration is a part of our common energy too. It always bothered me in the corporate world when someone would take an idea and patent it so no one else could use it. that is such bullshit. And don’t get me started on the pharmaceuticals that take government and charitable money for research and development, and then patent the drug and charge consumers a fortune.
And. We all have to put food on the table and in heat our homes. The act of writing is a sacred act. We each follow the path as best we can and who knows?
My mom said that to me once in passing many, many years ago. I think I was still a teenager! She said something along the lines of "ideas don't belong to anyone" and how ideas could just be wandering around and be picked up by anyone who passes by.
Which is different from full stories themselves, which I see as belonging to the people who experienced them, or sacred stories belonging to groups of people, for example. I feel like I should have said that somewhere in the piece but it's also kind of a different topic. There is a lot I don't write about because those stories are not mine to tell.
Yeah, the patents. Just ... so much in there that drives me absolutely mad. Let's start with pharmaceuticals and go for seeds and so much else ...
Who knows, indeed. (I heard a great line from a guy a while back who was quoting someone else I can't remember the name of -- speaking of ideas coming from everywhere -- that was, "The secret to the Great American Novel is family money.")
Was there ever a "full story? I have never even dreamed one like that. We can put a period to it, or turn a page, but even Gurdjieff in his work :ALL AND EVERYTHING, knew it was not literally true, though in a sense he was finishing something. And now the FOREST meander will begin, and I hope the forest will rub off the delightful, captivating quality of your post and the waves in response from all the friends.
Maybe "full story" isn't the right phrase. What I mean is, there are sacred stories that outsiders shouldn't tell or appropriate, but there are also stories that belong to other people that I wouldn't dream of telling. Like there are horrible tragedies that have happened to people where I live, people I'm friends with, and those are things I wouldn't take on as my own to tell. But also many things that have happened in my own family that have affected me but, again, I'm not the center of it. It's not "my" story to tell. (I think this is particularly important when children are involved, but really anyone.) Another nonfiction writer might think nothing of telling these stories, but to me it's very important not to grab for them as if they're something that's mine to share.
Yes, I get that for sure about stories vs ideas. Thanks for clarifying - I hadn't thought of that and it makes a big difference. And yes - seriously, the idea that artists should be "starving" needs to go. Artists make a VITAL contribution to our society, as evidenced by what we wouldn't want to be without. The way our culture pays for things is just wrong on every level. I mean, even art becomes worth more after the artist dies - wtf?!?
There's a quote about art attributed to Winston Churchill that turns out to be apocryphal, but it also turns out that he did defend the arts as vital to society: "... It lights the path and links the thought of one generation with another, and in the realm of price holds its own in intrinsic value with an ingot of gold. Evidently we are in the presence of a mystery which strikes down to the deepest foundations of human genius and of human glory. Ill fares the race which fails to salute the arts with the reverence and delight which are their due." (from this source: https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/the-arts-what-are-we-fighting-for/)
"When I first heard this, I thought,"That song sounds like something I should have stayed up all night and written!.." (John Prine, after hearing Blaze Foley"s 'Clay Pigeons.')
🤗!
You are so right about the roles of editors, and how often they are overlooked.
Brent and I are lucky that we have live-in editors, although having your spouse edit your work is a special kind of stress.
And I love the words about interacting with readers via comments/personal messages -- which presents both the best and worst of the internet. The worst is places that aren't moderated like much of Reddit or Facebook.
But places that are moderated? Man, that's a great way to interact with folks.
Which is part of why I like Substack so much. I think we've had zero negative interactions in almost two years on the platform. Instead, it's been getting really constructive feedback and getting to know folks.
I admire you two for doing that. My spouse doesn't read almost any of my work, for which I'm kind of grateful!
It's weird actually watching my kids getting old enough to interact more online, and seeing how easily they ignore the more toxic parts of it. Reminds me of something Pico Iyer said in a talk once when someone asked him what humans' relationship with all this digital tech would be like in 100 years and he said, "They'll have figured it out." By which he obviously didn't mean that they'd have everything figured out, but that humans adapt and whatever relationship they have with all of this, it'll be normal for them and they'll have all new problems to worry about.
It's not at all clear to this wrangler that what has been lost is a subject that can be "figured out" by minds navigating by the same old crumbled map.
It's great that they can ignore it and I guess I've gotten better at it. Some of our content appears on a publication's website whose name I won't mention here. And when they post the content on their Facebook page, the comments are often incredibly toxic and I won't go anywhere near it.
Hopefully, Pico is right!
Yeah, I learned immediately to never bother with looking at comments on places like Washington Post or The Atlantic. Having no moderation is just no good.
I hope he is, too!
I meant to add to that, that of course my kids aren't producing much online yet, and that's where you wade into the toxicity. My son was writing stories on WattPad at one point, which was cool and he got encouraging comments there. But we've yet to really get into "being online" in a way that's opens them up to more. Will just have to take it one step at a time.
I think maybe the interesting (and great!) thing about this platform is that it generally does feel like the words and essays are the author's creation but then the thing is posted and it becomes something that we're all communing about and around. It's fun! I read things and sometimes the words take me some place in line with the topic, and sometimes the words spin me off into another direction. Either way, there seems to be a community in the comments (isn't that a dizzying and weird thing???) ready to run with the author AND the comments in a generally wholesome way.
What a fun way to look at it! And of course "communing about and around" makes me think of capering and your own "Scramblin' Scribble" idea.
Yeah, there's something about the comment threads that seems to help people form connections of ideas, at least. I like that. I don't know if it will last forever, and it's not true for everyone (thinking of Elle's comment below where some of the feedback is less helpful), but so far? But it's also the case that I personally like dialogue and discourse. I actually don't talk much in person, so I guess I save it all for places like this. 😂
The long dormant Scramblin' Scribble! I write ~10,000 words a week on average, but unfortunately few to none of them are for my own enjoyment or edification. That's actually why you haven't seen me pop up in here as much recently - although I'll typically read, I just don't have either the time or the bandwidth to contribute much to the conversation and my personality is one that if I don't have anything that I want to say then I just don't say much of anything.
A thing that I've noticed around here is that most of the newsletters attract people who want to engage under the ground rules laid out (explicitly or implicitly) by the author themselves. You are not an asshole and you engage with the people here with respect and curiosity, and those virtues are reciprocated accordingly. Occasionally a newsletter will gain a critical mass and some folks with show their entire ass in the comments, but even then I've observed some decent peer-correction. While I hope you have a subscriber base that financially supports the life you want to live, I selfishly hope that it isn't so broad that the jabronis start bleed in from your Glenns Greenwalds of the Substack world.
I enjoy this second paragraph so much I can't even tell you. I might get a T-shirt that just says, "Not an Asshole." (I enjoy the guy who does the Nordic Animism YouTube videos, and he made a T-shirt last year or so that says "Don't Be a Dick" but in Nordic runes, which I got for my brother-in-law. Just the best. Now my son's nabbed one and wears it to school, which I've warned him he might get in trouble for if anyone asks what it says. But whatever.) Definitely, yes, avoiding the Glenn Greenwald et. als of the Substack world. No interest in that kind of dialogue.
And I very much appreciate the sentiment of not saying anything if there isn't much to say. I wish more humans in the world were like that! One thing I'm constantly saying to my kids is, "It's okay not to talk." Like we can just go for a walk and enjoy the world together. It's okay!
Lost in mulling here with y'all so must heed once more the call of the forest, and her intolerance of mind's propensity for distraction.
Thank you, Nia. It is so very good to be here with you!
Always appreciate our interactions, Greg, in whatever format!
Beautifully written as always and it is a topic Ive been pondering on for a while. There is an implicit form of ‘collective labour’ in how ideas fall onto a writer’s page - and the most compelling articles are the ones that dance with the constructive and sometimes conflicting tensions that shape our voice. As you’ve alluded to, there is no craft without graft.
It is *delightful* to think about it as a dance, especially with those tensions in mind. I definitely think of your writing as something that prompts more ideas and pondering.
Thrillingly insightful expose of Antonia's secrets. But one she still keeps close. Where did she stumble onto the secret of the 48 hour day?
I'll never tell. 😂
Reciprocity - the best word ever!!
That and "kinship" -- both containing worlds I'm trying to find a way toward ...
Here with you, thank you!
Thank you, Alain!
As always, I read your words and they are both incredibly calming and reassuring, like listening to someone explain something I've felt for years but never quite put into words, and also, EXTREMELY ENERGISING because they make me want to leap up and write a 20,000 word response. And I think that's part of the joy of this writing-commons approach. In Seth Godin's phrasing, we infect each other with the idea virus (it's funny how that analogy is no longer as appealing as it once was), or perhaps we're like musicians jamming off each other, finding deeper layers of the melody.
Or maybe: it's just how great writing happens, Mike. Stop making everything a metaphor.
I feel the same way as you do about writing in my Substack - with the knowledge I'm relying completely on the original scientific research of others, so even if I tried to claim "ownership" in some way, I really couldn't. (Which is why when something of mine suddenly reaches a wider audience and I get feedback like "this is amazing, thanks, random English guy" I feel like saying "thank you, I'll pass it on to the people doing the actual work!!!" and then present them with a hundred-entry bibliography).
I also feel like you do about traditional publishing. I'd love to have a publishing deal! But I wouldn't want to adapt something that deserves to exist elsewhere, because that's where it can be weird and risky and commons-y enough to flourish. It feels like an unspoken loyalty to what the work deserves, and from my (totally inexperienced) perspective, tradpub feels like a very different beast: much more risk-averse, much more grounded in marketing systems that have been around for decades and that are looking increasingly dusty and over-safe at least to my eyes, and operating on a work-cycle lasting *years*, which horrifies me in the same way when I was a freelancer I could never understand why the biggest publications were the ones that took the longest to pay me. (With a *check*. WTF.)
>>"I told this person that I wouldn’t be averse to the idea, if a publisher were interested, but there’d have to be something in it for all the people who’d already been supporting this work, financially or otherwise."
This really got to me. It's how I feel too, so much at this point. The kind of gratitude for my readers that makes me blink a bit faster. And - I never want the folk who have invested their time and money in me to feel like it was a bad bet. Whatever the finish-line is of the projects I've invited them into, I want to meet them there. I want us all to cross it together. So - YES. This. Thank you so much for putting it into words, because now I can see how important it is to me on so many levels.
I'm stopping this comment now because I'll write another 19,300 words, just you watch me. But I may come back.
Bravo. I love the way you're approaching all this, Antonia.
(And thank you for the kind shout-out! But I don't think that's my idea at all, I probably stole it! See: "even if I tried to claim "ownership" in some way, I really couldn't". 😄)
You're stuck with the credit, I'm afraid!
I really wish I didn't feel like "book publishing is broken" were such a truth, but I've seen some things happen over the last couple of years that really make me feel like book publishing is broken. (Including the anti-trust trial in the U.S. last year against two of the big publishers trying to merge. That was a ride. I still plan to write about that at some point because it left me thinking, on a daily basis, that the heads of publishing houses want everyone to think that a book's success is down to magical elves or something.) Which is sad because it doesn't have to be, and -- thinking about Elle's comments here -- a project where you go away for a couple years or more and really have time and space to think deeply and eventually emerge with a finished narrative really is a different thing. We do need book publishing to figure itself out because, again, otherwise it's only people with private means of support who can afford to do that. Plus book publishing is full of a lot of really great people who care about books! They deserve better than what seems to be happening in the industry, as do writers.
I know what you mean about giving credit to people doing the actual work. That's always really important to me, maybe even more so when you see it not happening elsewhere. It did create a stumbling block in my walking book, which I hadn't expected. My editor kept sending things back to me telling me to use fewer quotes and references and trust my own voice more, and I knew what she meant by that but I kept going, "But this wasn't my idea! I can't claim it as my own!" It was hard (and still is) figuring out how to write things in your own voice while also giving credit and reference to people whose ideas or research you're relying on.
Because you do have to create a narrative that people want to read, and you won't generally succeed at that without using your own voice and by constantly referring people elsewhere. And I, at least, want to do that not so people have to read my work specifically, but because I owe it to the subjects I'm writing about to help people find a way to care.