On writing on Substack

and how pursuing it to the exclusion of other writing can lead to an impoverished creative soul

Hello! This is another in a series of working out thoughts on the page, which I’ve written about here and here. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

I’ve recently been thinking about the three different types of writing I do, and why exclusively prioritizing Substack leads to an impoverished state of the creative soul. Why should you care about different types of writing practices? Well, if you write, then I believe that paying attention to how corporate/commercial spaces colonizes our creativity can help protect the private, nascent spaces that lead to the best work. If you’re not a writer but have another creative practice, it’s a reminder that the impulse to share publicly on social media can have a dampening effect on the joy those things bring. And if you are someone who simply enjoys taking in writing that others’ do, it gives an insight into the process of writing.

1. Writing for Substack

While I do feel that I should write my Substack as regularly as I can, I don’t write it because anyone requires it. (Many writers are now told that this platform is essential to selling and/or promoting their books.) For me, writing here is about honoring the impulse in me to share my thinking about things as diverse as the nightmare of getting a puppy and choosing a name for our child as well as my favorite books.

This platform pretends it’s good for emergent ideas and notions because of the social aspect and the Twitter-like notes feature, but it’s that social media design (and its attendant problems) that leads to said ideas becoming calcified and unreachable once tethered to this digital space. Substack isn’t here for creativity—despite what corporate says—but for profit. This might be a more negative take than you’d expect from someone who both pursues writing on this platform and helps people build their own newsletters. But attaching creative output to a platform that both ranks you and gamifies the process is problematic. As the moral philosopher Kate Manne writes in her post Substack is a Dangerous Game for Writers, “I have to wonder: what are these incentive structures doing to my writing? How is the thing I love doing, and care so much about doing well, getting warped by all of these metrics?”

I do value having Substack as a means to connect with you (hi! thank you!) and to explore others’ new writing. The issue isn’t so much that Substack exists or how it does, but that the promise of virality and income can make it seem more important than the two other forms of writing I do.

2. Speculative writing

I suppose speculative writing could be thought of as capital-W Writing, in that it’s the writing I do that I intend to become a book or perhaps another published piece. This is a space for novels in the drawer (I’ve got two) and for little vignettes I might weave together into a bigger project as well as writing pitches for articles I want to write. Where I can get into trouble is feeling like writing for now (e.g. Substack) is more important than writing for the future.

Writing speculatively requires discipline to do it, to return to it, and—crucially—a healthy respect for the fallow time creative works need to be seen and edited clearly. At the moment, I’m working on a project that I hope will become a book one day, but most importantly, I feel that I need to write it before I go into labor. (No pressure…) Publishing it as I go on Substack would not only disrupt the private contemplation required to write something good, it would deflate its potential. Even as I prioritize publishing more often on Substack and find my days stacked like Jenga with deadlines, I remind myself that making time for nebulous writing is perhaps the most important creative practice of all. When we “write with the door closed,” as Stephen King says, we allow the work to become what it needs to be.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about something Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi says (read her Call Me Zebra, if you haven’t already), which is that writing has its own consciousness, which can only emerge on the page by giving it regular time and space. Last week, Catherine Lacey also said something along these lines, which reminded me of the value of committing to writing something that takes a long time to gestate:

In preparation for having a child, I’m rereading Drifts by Kate Zambreno (it’s a novel about someone trying to write a novel while being pregnant—highly recommend). The book is written in a fragmentary style, reflecting her mental state at the time. I, too, like to write in fragments, and I can imagine putting all the energy of speculative writing into Substack’s Notes function rather than saving them for a project that requires years of tinkering. What a shame it would be to have deflated that creative momentum through steady livestreaming.

3. Journaling

Part of this recognition of the three distinct kinds of writing emerged through contemplating what the point of journaling was for me now, which I wrote about recently. For me, journaling is a way to exist on the page without an end goal. The point isn’t for these pages to be read by anyone eventually, but rather to use writing as a way to access my interior in a performanceless space. That’s part of why I was irked by the Substacker who said most of her content emerges from her journaling practice. Of course, everyone is allowed to delineate their writing practices in a way that suits them. Who am I to be annoyed about such a thing? In fact, I’m grateful because the reflection made me appreciate how important it is to write without an end goal.

So what does elaborating these distinctions this mean for me (and possibly you)?

Above, I suggested that it matters to contemplate this either because it can inform how your own writing or creative practice is delineated or help you appreciate the process behind work you like. But there’s a practical component, too. I found myself prioritizing Substack to the exclusion of other writing because it was a visible marker of activity. If I send a newsletter, I’m succeeding on the terms laid forth by this company and visibly participating in the creative economy. But as I said, once I write here, it becomes ossified, and the metrics for success are determined algorithmically. Writing speculatively is the only way in which I can produce something that will matter in the long term, which isn’t future digital detritus. And recommitting to the practice of journaling means I am in communication with my interior simply for myself. Now, even if it’s just a few minutes, I make time in my day to do both. Sure, tendrils of each may make their way into this space, but that is not the intention, and that is the thing I must make sure to protect.

In Drifts, Zambreno quotes Albert Camus, who wrote in his notebook, “What prevents a book from being written becomes the book itself.” What I’m trying to say here is that Substack can be a way of preventing books from becoming written. I’m aware that there is exquisite writing on this platform and that it is certainly allowed to be an end in itself. But for writers who have goals beyond this digital space, heeding its dangers is a worthy goal.