Success = the most important people in my life complain when I neglect it. (I'm sitting pretty.)
Meaning is the key object of my attention in my life these days. I write meaningfully for meaningful people. I jump from multi-chapter long form prose to scribbled snippets to haiku.
I have very little paid-subscriber-only content. It is limited to updates about my life (I've moved, changed jobs, etc.). I'm really taking naked advantage of the fact that all of my paid subscribers are friends. All other content is free.
I wish substack would make "publish to everyone" the default so I don't have to click the extra click, but I'm not holding my breath. I wonder if Heather Cox Richardson complains about that. I wish she would.
Perhaps I produce the substack equivalent of a neighborhood garage band. All the neighbors come over Saturday afternoon. I wish I was clever enough to have planned that.
Just want to say thank you. I tried to copy all your bulletin points at them end into my note, but it wouldn’t work for me, so I just copied your whole article in my notes.
I am new to writing publicly in Substack, or anywhere else, so many of the tips and thoughts you expressed really resonate with me. I am retired though, so I don’t write for the $$. But I find lots of value in honest substacks and I subscribe to a few—including yours. So please keep writing from your gut, your heart, your experiences.
Substack numbers or alluring, but they are not why I write.
I write to find my voice! I have been silenced over the years. My voice was not valued beyond the elementary school kids who had to listen, since I was a teacher. But now, I am trying to speak my gut, my heart, my spirit. Freely. And it’s the freely part I am still working on. I don’t want this to become an exercise in writing to please others. That’s the habit I want to BREAK.
Oh Linda, I feel this to my core! I think that’s the number one reason why I write too. Finding my voice. Figuring out what I think and what I want, not the voices in my head that have taught me to think a certain way to serve &
please others. Thank you so much for your heartfelt comment. Write on! 🤜🏼🤛💪🏼
Linda, this lights me up! 🌟 You're more than Mostly Brave. You're clear on your deep desire to free your voice from what I lovingly call my Monkeys of Fear (fellow people-pleaser, too). Let's express our wild hearts here - with less Arggg! and more Ahhh... 🥰
To me, success on substack means: someone restacking my post. But even better- Someone leaving a really engaged and long comment. In my post about the erosion of women’s rights "The right's collective abuse of American women", I got so many comments from women sharing their personal stories. Deeply deeply personal. And it was so incredible. The fact that something I wrote allowed a stranger to feel safe enough to expose something so deep and personal made me want to cry. And not just one, but many. So many women who lived in a pre-roe America, speaking about their and their friend's horrific experiences.... The feminists who helped bring roe into existence now devastated about the progress they made being destroyed. While the subject is dark, It’s such a wonderful feeling to be vulnerable and then have that vulnerability returned in an internet space that is so overwhelmingly cruel and nasty.
My writing purposes: 1) wake my mostly retired generation up to what is going on in the world; we allowed it, get to helping fix it before we go 2) self-expression - I’m not much of a verbalizer, so …
3) want to contribute more than the work-for-pay I did for most of life (though supporting family WAS a righteous cause)
This is an inspired collection of ideas to help solve a super sticky problem. As you say, it's a classic Catch-22. To buy time to write costs money. To earn money requires commercial success. To have commercial success requires mass validation. It's easy to see why we all keep getting on that train which is why it's so important that we all post these kinds of reminders to each other to step off at the next stop, slow down, and enjoy the open sky.
I love this list of success items. Thank you! My goal on Substack is to foster authentic connections surrounding my work, publications I enjoy, and other writers. Whatever subscriber number that is, it is. I find when my mind gets pulled towards the numbers, the focus falls away from writing and reading, and that never feels good. There will always be a "race" I'm not winning, so I try to stay open-minded and steady; I want to learn but I must go at my own pace.
So true! No matter how we slice it, numbers counting feels like comparison. And we all know comparison is the thief of everything creativity, joy, fill in the blank.
My goal is to write 30 minutes per day most days (most is intentionally loose). Second is to be brave enough to trust that will create 2-3 poems per month that I want to publish. That’s it. On my good days at least 🙃
"My gut was telling me . . . I needed to get to X amount of paid subscribers so I could give up one of my side jobs."
I read this and went on and then two paragraphs later screeched to a halt and went back. My thought - and this probably means that I'm a reader, not a writer, at heart - is that, for me, I'd be giving up one side job for a different one. I'm not sure if this is what you were trying to say or not, but I do know that a walk in the woods, and even more so, sleeping out in the woods, always helps me sort it out. My gut gets dragged in the wrong direction by the rest of me at times, but truth will out.
Well, truth is I have been trying to get to a point where I can give up my teaching job. Since I've accrued so much education and 20 years teaching, it's hard to find another part-time job that pays that well and allows for as much creativity and autonomy. It's part-time, but due to budget cuts, school closures, and the best faculty leaving, it's becoming toxic. So my gut is telling me to make more $ at writing so I can get out of that toxic relationship. :-)
I hear this from teachers a lot, even here in MN where they're paid fairly well in comparison and (at least in the Twin Cities metro) things are still holding together. But I think even here, we're on the edge of changes for the worse - school boards going to the hard right, budgets going down, good teachers retiring as soon as they can. If you can make a living in a way that lets you breathe easy, i really hope you can make it work!
I fear we're largely defenseless against, perhaps even oblivious to, the rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem.
I’m doing a digital detox from a select few metric-driven sites because I couldn’t stop checking them following a book launch. I wish I didn’t care about any numbers—book sales, Goodreads reviews, # of likes, subscribers, weight on my scale as indicator of health. My mind loves measurement and the illusion of control. Trying to change that, even just 10%.
Thanks for so many valuable thoughts and quotes. Among them: “The conventional notions of success can dim the voltage of our ideas, water down the fragrant broth of our thoughts. When an impulse of curiosity strikes, it’s best to follow it with a passion that moves forward in disregard of destiny or consequences.”
Post book launch it seems unrealistic to not watch numbers! I mean seriously, how does one NOT rely on external validation post launch? especially when launch is all about numbers. Numbers is the measurement, numbers is self-assessment. Numbers is our future, in this case. Numbers is illusion of control, like you say. And numbers "waters down the fragrant broth of our thoughts." A quote that still makes me laugh but is so true!
Thank you for this post Summer. Two of the top tips immediately jumped out at me as the Substack goals I didn't know I had! First up is creative exploration (i.e. no goal), something that I gave myself permission forat the gbeginning of the year but have somehow lost sight of lately; and second, inspired by Sharon Blackie, to be a catalyst for transformation. Because I still believe that another world is possible (which is the name of my Substack!).
Yes, Annette! 🙌🏽 Explorations and catalyzing Another World (Charles Eisenstein?) ~ I'm a fellow wild swimmer who sings for the waters daily 🌊 Following. Good to connect here.
I would add, "commenting on a Substack post or thread" and "getting a response to a comment you posted". Could expand this to any social media. I've been thinking about doing my own Substack for quite a while.
Yes, Eva! That is success to me as well, especially when someone says "thank you for saying what I've been feeling but haven't been able to articulate in my brain" or whatever. And you should try doing your own substack!
I started writing Mercurial Musings as a learning tool for astrology. While dabbling in it for years, I took up formal learning in 2020 when I lost my job and found that writing about it was a great way to synthesize my learning. Originally, it was an email to a small group in my spiritual community. Then people started asking if they could forward it so my email list grew. People told me they loved my writing so that was another reason to keep going. I have an academic writing background but after writing some personal essays and starting to write a memoir (you know this story), I gave up on writing for a while. So suddenly, I was writing again and it wasn't so intimidating because I didn't have to deal with all my own personal baggage but it wasn't academic either. Then I moved it to Substack to see what would happen if I made it public. So it's become a big experiment. Sometimes I bring in a bit of the personal and sometimes not. It's a bit whimsical and I don't have to prove everything I write and footnote the hell out of it so it's more fun than academic writing. I have a habit of turning my "art" into work and killing the joy in it, so for me, success is about pleasure I guess. Am I still enjoying writing? Are other people also enjoying my writing too (in that order)? I also want what I put out to be meaningful in some way. Does it serve a purpose? Does what I'm writing matter? These are the questions I ask myself. I don't have a paywall and don't have very many paid subscribers. I've contemplated adding "paid" content, but haven't done anything about it yet.
The most "success" thing around my Substack has to be when someone I don't know reads my writing and then becomes a client. I love it when that happens!
Summer, I am always blown away by your writing...always, but you have outdone yourself here. I am going to print this and marinate my soul in it. I recently posted a note and it got over 220 likes. It was really just an off the cuff moment and the way it resonated with people's hearts is the reason I have been here since December. I basically just shared my story in a nutshell, very briefly. People responded, they thanked me for sharing my story. I just shared hope. I feel like that's why I am here. To share hope. One woman DM'd me and our private conversation was beyond meaningful.
Success for me on Substack is when I know I have touched the heart of my reader, I have offered love and hope. That's it. I have no paywalls.
My Substack goal is to build a safe, loving, community where people can meet and connect (possibly via Zoom) to support each other and heal from whatever life has handed them because we do not heal in isolation, we heal together.
Here is the note, thank you for this article. It means so much, I'm very grateful for what you bring to this platform and the world.🙏🌍💓
I just finished post number 2 on Substack and published it on Sunday. I've committed to two posts a month. A colleague who is an English Prof. said they "Love what I write" and that made my day. I have lists of "Ideas"and would love to do more but since I also have a full time job, that pays the bills, I have to be realistic. Right now, the fact that "I'm doing the thing"(writing) is success. My goal would be to publish once a week and some paid subscribers would be lovely but I'm not going to obsess about it right now.
OUR DEEPER DESIRES: What a refreshing reset on dominant culture mode, Summer! I'm here on Substack to explore the sweet spot. The exquisite space in the heart of a Venn diagram, the intersection of my specifically weird magic, and the needs/wants of others. It's called a mandorla (almond-shaped intersection of two circles). May we be guided by resonance and joy 🌟
What do you consider success on Substack? Do you have any Substack goals?
Success = the most important people in my life complain when I neglect it. (I'm sitting pretty.)
Meaning is the key object of my attention in my life these days. I write meaningfully for meaningful people. I jump from multi-chapter long form prose to scribbled snippets to haiku.
I have very little paid-subscriber-only content. It is limited to updates about my life (I've moved, changed jobs, etc.). I'm really taking naked advantage of the fact that all of my paid subscribers are friends. All other content is free.
I wish substack would make "publish to everyone" the default so I don't have to click the extra click, but I'm not holding my breath. I wonder if Heather Cox Richardson complains about that. I wish she would.
Perhaps I produce the substack equivalent of a neighborhood garage band. All the neighbors come over Saturday afternoon. I wish I was clever enough to have planned that.
I love the neighborhood garage band picture 🙂
Haha I love that, too! Neighborhood garage band. I love your approach to free content vs. paid! I agree about the annoying defaults, too.
Just want to say thank you. I tried to copy all your bulletin points at them end into my note, but it wouldn’t work for me, so I just copied your whole article in my notes.
I am new to writing publicly in Substack, or anywhere else, so many of the tips and thoughts you expressed really resonate with me. I am retired though, so I don’t write for the $$. But I find lots of value in honest substacks and I subscribe to a few—including yours. So please keep writing from your gut, your heart, your experiences.
Substack numbers or alluring, but they are not why I write.
I write to find my voice! I have been silenced over the years. My voice was not valued beyond the elementary school kids who had to listen, since I was a teacher. But now, I am trying to speak my gut, my heart, my spirit. Freely. And it’s the freely part I am still working on. I don’t want this to become an exercise in writing to please others. That’s the habit I want to BREAK.
Keep being who you and sharing it please!
Oh Linda, I feel this to my core! I think that’s the number one reason why I write too. Finding my voice. Figuring out what I think and what I want, not the voices in my head that have taught me to think a certain way to serve &
please others. Thank you so much for your heartfelt comment. Write on! 🤜🏼🤛💪🏼
Hey Linda, you keep going my friend! Just belt it out now 👍
💗
Linda, this lights me up! 🌟 You're more than Mostly Brave. You're clear on your deep desire to free your voice from what I lovingly call my Monkeys of Fear (fellow people-pleaser, too). Let's express our wild hearts here - with less Arggg! and more Ahhh... 🥰
To me, success on substack means: someone restacking my post. But even better- Someone leaving a really engaged and long comment. In my post about the erosion of women’s rights "The right's collective abuse of American women", I got so many comments from women sharing their personal stories. Deeply deeply personal. And it was so incredible. The fact that something I wrote allowed a stranger to feel safe enough to expose something so deep and personal made me want to cry. And not just one, but many. So many women who lived in a pre-roe America, speaking about their and their friend's horrific experiences.... The feminists who helped bring roe into existence now devastated about the progress they made being destroyed. While the subject is dark, It’s such a wonderful feeling to be vulnerable and then have that vulnerability returned in an internet space that is so overwhelmingly cruel and nasty.
That is an honor and responsibility to hold those stories and hearts in your space!
So beautiful and moving, Liz. Shell 🐚Yes to the generous deep heart-sharing here!
My writing purposes: 1) wake my mostly retired generation up to what is going on in the world; we allowed it, get to helping fix it before we go 2) self-expression - I’m not much of a verbalizer, so …
3) want to contribute more than the work-for-pay I did for most of life (though supporting family WAS a righteous cause)
OMG I love that. Thank you.
👏
This is an inspired collection of ideas to help solve a super sticky problem. As you say, it's a classic Catch-22. To buy time to write costs money. To earn money requires commercial success. To have commercial success requires mass validation. It's easy to see why we all keep getting on that train which is why it's so important that we all post these kinds of reminders to each other to step off at the next stop, slow down, and enjoy the open sky.
Yes! I'm getting images of a dog chasing its tail. But we just have to chase it slower and take breaks I guess, lol.
Yeah, it’s all about the breaks. 😴
I love this list of success items. Thank you! My goal on Substack is to foster authentic connections surrounding my work, publications I enjoy, and other writers. Whatever subscriber number that is, it is. I find when my mind gets pulled towards the numbers, the focus falls away from writing and reading, and that never feels good. There will always be a "race" I'm not winning, so I try to stay open-minded and steady; I want to learn but I must go at my own pace.
So true! No matter how we slice it, numbers counting feels like comparison. And we all know comparison is the thief of everything creativity, joy, fill in the blank.
My goal is to write 30 minutes per day most days (most is intentionally loose). Second is to be brave enough to trust that will create 2-3 poems per month that I want to publish. That’s it. On my good days at least 🙃
I love that intention of bravery! Any luck publishing? I used to write poetry. Lots of rejections! lol
"My gut was telling me . . . I needed to get to X amount of paid subscribers so I could give up one of my side jobs."
I read this and went on and then two paragraphs later screeched to a halt and went back. My thought - and this probably means that I'm a reader, not a writer, at heart - is that, for me, I'd be giving up one side job for a different one. I'm not sure if this is what you were trying to say or not, but I do know that a walk in the woods, and even more so, sleeping out in the woods, always helps me sort it out. My gut gets dragged in the wrong direction by the rest of me at times, but truth will out.
Well, truth is I have been trying to get to a point where I can give up my teaching job. Since I've accrued so much education and 20 years teaching, it's hard to find another part-time job that pays that well and allows for as much creativity and autonomy. It's part-time, but due to budget cuts, school closures, and the best faculty leaving, it's becoming toxic. So my gut is telling me to make more $ at writing so I can get out of that toxic relationship. :-)
😔. I am a retired teacher. It is sad to hear so many stories about schools becoming toxic. They should be places of wonder and discovery.
I hear this from teachers a lot, even here in MN where they're paid fairly well in comparison and (at least in the Twin Cities metro) things are still holding together. But I think even here, we're on the edge of changes for the worse - school boards going to the hard right, budgets going down, good teachers retiring as soon as they can. If you can make a living in a way that lets you breathe easy, i really hope you can make it work!
I fear we're largely defenseless against, perhaps even oblivious to, the rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem.
😭 😭 😭
I’m doing a digital detox from a select few metric-driven sites because I couldn’t stop checking them following a book launch. I wish I didn’t care about any numbers—book sales, Goodreads reviews, # of likes, subscribers, weight on my scale as indicator of health. My mind loves measurement and the illusion of control. Trying to change that, even just 10%.
Thanks for so many valuable thoughts and quotes. Among them: “The conventional notions of success can dim the voltage of our ideas, water down the fragrant broth of our thoughts. When an impulse of curiosity strikes, it’s best to follow it with a passion that moves forward in disregard of destiny or consequences.”
Post book launch it seems unrealistic to not watch numbers! I mean seriously, how does one NOT rely on external validation post launch? especially when launch is all about numbers. Numbers is the measurement, numbers is self-assessment. Numbers is our future, in this case. Numbers is illusion of control, like you say. And numbers "waters down the fragrant broth of our thoughts." A quote that still makes me laugh but is so true!
Thank you for this post Summer. Two of the top tips immediately jumped out at me as the Substack goals I didn't know I had! First up is creative exploration (i.e. no goal), something that I gave myself permission forat the gbeginning of the year but have somehow lost sight of lately; and second, inspired by Sharon Blackie, to be a catalyst for transformation. Because I still believe that another world is possible (which is the name of my Substack!).
Ooh love that. And love the name/theme of your stack!
Thank you Summer 💛
Yes, Annette! 🙌🏽 Explorations and catalyzing Another World (Charles Eisenstein?) ~ I'm a fellow wild swimmer who sings for the waters daily 🌊 Following. Good to connect here.
Hi Christine, lovely to connect! 👋🏼
I would add, "commenting on a Substack post or thread" and "getting a response to a comment you posted". Could expand this to any social media. I've been thinking about doing my own Substack for quite a while.
Yes, Eva! That is success to me as well, especially when someone says "thank you for saying what I've been feeling but haven't been able to articulate in my brain" or whatever. And you should try doing your own substack!
I started writing Mercurial Musings as a learning tool for astrology. While dabbling in it for years, I took up formal learning in 2020 when I lost my job and found that writing about it was a great way to synthesize my learning. Originally, it was an email to a small group in my spiritual community. Then people started asking if they could forward it so my email list grew. People told me they loved my writing so that was another reason to keep going. I have an academic writing background but after writing some personal essays and starting to write a memoir (you know this story), I gave up on writing for a while. So suddenly, I was writing again and it wasn't so intimidating because I didn't have to deal with all my own personal baggage but it wasn't academic either. Then I moved it to Substack to see what would happen if I made it public. So it's become a big experiment. Sometimes I bring in a bit of the personal and sometimes not. It's a bit whimsical and I don't have to prove everything I write and footnote the hell out of it so it's more fun than academic writing. I have a habit of turning my "art" into work and killing the joy in it, so for me, success is about pleasure I guess. Am I still enjoying writing? Are other people also enjoying my writing too (in that order)? I also want what I put out to be meaningful in some way. Does it serve a purpose? Does what I'm writing matter? These are the questions I ask myself. I don't have a paywall and don't have very many paid subscribers. I've contemplated adding "paid" content, but haven't done anything about it yet.
The most "success" thing around my Substack has to be when someone I don't know reads my writing and then becomes a client. I love it when that happens!
I think that's it for now.
What kind of client? astrology or writing?
I love this: "I have a habit of turning my "art" into work and killing the joy in it, so for me, success is about pleasure I guess." <3 <3 <3
Astrology - so far anyway. Although I have had some editing clients come through my wriitng - just not via Mercurial Musings.
I enjoyed reading your words. It resonates with my depths, and your list brought a smile to my face. Thank you for being.
Aw Louisa! Thank you so much! I'm glad it resonated! and more importantly, made you smile. THIS to me is success!!!
Summer, I am always blown away by your writing...always, but you have outdone yourself here. I am going to print this and marinate my soul in it. I recently posted a note and it got over 220 likes. It was really just an off the cuff moment and the way it resonated with people's hearts is the reason I have been here since December. I basically just shared my story in a nutshell, very briefly. People responded, they thanked me for sharing my story. I just shared hope. I feel like that's why I am here. To share hope. One woman DM'd me and our private conversation was beyond meaningful.
Success for me on Substack is when I know I have touched the heart of my reader, I have offered love and hope. That's it. I have no paywalls.
My Substack goal is to build a safe, loving, community where people can meet and connect (possibly via Zoom) to support each other and heal from whatever life has handed them because we do not heal in isolation, we heal together.
Here is the note, thank you for this article. It means so much, I'm very grateful for what you bring to this platform and the world.🙏🌍💓
https://substack.com/@nikiswriting/note/c-56141345
YES!!!! Thank you, Niki! Touching hearts, sharing hope. Amen!
I just finished post number 2 on Substack and published it on Sunday. I've committed to two posts a month. A colleague who is an English Prof. said they "Love what I write" and that made my day. I have lists of "Ideas"and would love to do more but since I also have a full time job, that pays the bills, I have to be realistic. Right now, the fact that "I'm doing the thing"(writing) is success. My goal would be to publish once a week and some paid subscribers would be lovely but I'm not going to obsess about it right now.
Lovely goals and you’re doing them! Congrats!
Thank you!
OUR DEEPER DESIRES: What a refreshing reset on dominant culture mode, Summer! I'm here on Substack to explore the sweet spot. The exquisite space in the heart of a Venn diagram, the intersection of my specifically weird magic, and the needs/wants of others. It's called a mandorla (almond-shaped intersection of two circles). May we be guided by resonance and joy 🌟
That's beautiful! Sounds like the mandorla should be your writer's logo :-)