Just the Right amount of Writing
How does one really write?
Oh my goodness gracious me. We are so close to the end of the year and I am still struggling to write an interesting, popular, widely read, life-changing, original, wordy, regular, informative newsletter. But instead what I do is, keep subscribing to more and more newsletters. My latest subscription is Roxane Gay’s newsletter named Audacity, and I just subscribed to Aubrey Hirsch’s newsletter. I am a regular reader of Jill Fillipovic, Jessica Valenti, Amy Odell and Alicia Kennedy. I love all the ones that I read regularly, although, I do have mixed feelings about Valenti’s, as I am not sure how much more I want to follow the abortion ban stories of the United States.
I am a free subscriber to all of these American newsletters- I am on the cheap seats and I eat the scraps that are left for those who cannot pay. I would, of course, love to sign up for a free trial of the paid version of these newsletters, just to see what it looks like from the inside, if you know what I mean. But I know me- I am the kind who will sit in a cafe for about an hour and half because I paid for my coffee, which means that the free subscription will mean me reading each and every post of theirs, without blinking, every single hour of every one of those seven days.
However, all these free ones, still give me plenty to read and think about. I read Gabriele Galimberti’s side of the Balenciaga debacle on Odell’s newsletter, (free for me, made possible by paid subscribers) and saw how the fashion house tried to make the photographer a scapegoat. I identified so much with Kennedy’s last newsletter of 2022, where she reflects on the power she attributes to notebooks on changing her life. I have done that before. I continue to do that. And I stopped just about last week, the day I read her letter. And then there is Fillipovic’s newsletter whose tenor I love and once in a while, she recommends some really fine things- candles, clothes, skin care, and so forth. None of which are available in my part of the world, and frankly, none of which I want to purchase. But I like reading. I like knowing and discovering. If you see, Fillipovic recommends all these substackers I have written about but I discovered Fillipovic through Anand Giridharadas, who Fillipovic does not recommend. I wonder what this realization makes me feel.
Writing for an audience- about gender, or a topic that seems a bit too ‘educational’ is something that I just don’t seem to like to do. I write about it all the time- this year alone I have written about seven really lengthy papers or documents on gender. I also have a certain tone when I write these education articles, which I find so off putting for a newsletter. I mean, if you want to read that tone, you might as well read the reports I write. But somehow I cannot write about some grim stuff in a fun way. I know a lot of people do that- Mona Chalabi, for example, does a fantastic job where she transforms stats into visually striking educative art. I just peeked at Aubrey Hirsch’s newsletter, and she is saying some really important things about the low numbers of comediennes using comics.
Oh dear. But I am not an artist. And unlike Jill Fillipovic, Jessica Valenti, Roxane Gay, Amy Odell or Alicia Kennedy, I am also not a trained writer. I cannot write in a way I think they do. They are seasoned writers and I have attended Roxane Gay’s Masterclass where she reminds her students that writing is a muscle, it gets stronger the more you use it. These seasoned writers have muscles that let them just get up and write. (Now that I think of it, I just did that too. I swear, I just finished dinner and sat down to write this).
I think all this is taking me towards telling you one thing: I think I think too much. I mean, look at that phrase. It has two ‘I thinks’. I think even about thinking (which is a good thing, because this morning, I just saw a tiktok video on the importance of thinking) but I am pretty sure I cannot let my overthinking stop me.
Anyway, I’ll leave you with an art by Missy Chimovitz, which you can see on her Instagram.
It is so important to silence that inner-critic and just remind myself that, uhm, maybe, I know enough to write an 800-word article that is filled with some wonderful things I have read around the internet. And maybe, I have my writing muscles and more importantly a voice that I have seasoned.
On the topic of season, wish you a happy festive season.
Thank you for reading thus far and for being a cheerleader. May 2023 be fantastic for you and yours. Love!