Who am I? What is this?
Let us find out together, who am I and what this is.
1. Why This? Why Now?
Tell your readers why you are launching this space: I’m launching this to put myself under a reflective trance and reflective pressure, to help me write out two books, and with these books out of my clogged system I can begin to think about all the other things to do. I already have two books worth of writing in my sketchbooks but, this format, continuous writing for a small group of folks will be the start of what will become snowballs (it’s very winter where I am right now, 1/2/2023 after 5, Wenatchee, WA) so metaphoring whether the weather be hot or whether the weather be cold; snowballing into a downward wave of frost away from an apex, revealing the points I hope to be making, where shards of black silk kick with the harsh blown air, and so an avalanche of my worthwhile bs reaches beyond the need of a footnote, past the foothills into your town, where my feelings could flatten a city. I’ll write to you carefully.
What brought you here and what inspired you to do it now: publishing, making this part of the writing process. Think of it as a mini personal manifesto: Well, my first book is a conversation. I’m calling this conversation, Feminine Counsel: conversations between myself and women in my life about gender, biological or otherwise; about sexuality, physical or otherwise, and about what brought us together, platonic infatuation or otherwise. The other book, Lavendar, is more I and love and sexuality and spirit focused, a collection of essays and poems and story cathartic stories. And I need to do these now. They’ve been rewording themselves around my mind for over half my life and finally, the confidence or the naivety in me has taken loose and is now running into the year blind with excitement.
2. A Community Here
You are not just starting a newsletter when you start a Substack, you are starting a community. You are inviting people to subscribe to your thinking. What kind of space will this be? I imagine folks who know me will be the community, people who know it’s weird that I’m using the word, folks. I also imagine this to be a place where other writers can lol at how bad my writing is, feeling reassured that they aren’t the worst out there. I’m making this for myself and I’m making it for the haters. People subscribing to my thinking sounds daunting to me but…
I’ll make this substack a place for incomplete questions and flexible answers and best case scenario, a solution or some grace will finish the question and avail an answer. This space will be about development.
3. Being Very Specific
Readers love clarity. Be clear when you explain what they should expect: how often will you be posting? I will commit to a weekly post for a year. I will complete these books or at least one by this time next year. Can they expect certain posts on specific days? The community can expect a post on Sundays. What will the free subscribers get? Free subscribers will receive these weekly posts. What does a paid subscription buy them? Paid subscribers will get the poetry in between; the stuff that is almost elegant; the typos one mistake for loose poetic eloquence.