What I'm Reading: Newsletter Edition
I figured it would also be interesting to write about other things with words.
Since this is a holiday week, this week’s newsletter is about…newsletters. I read them. We all read them. You’re reading one at this moment! (Blink twice if the newsletter is in the room with you right now.) I write about the books I read so I figured it would also be interesting to write about other things with words.
We’re in this ridiculous economy where there aren’t enough publications and there aren’t enough publications who pay writers enough, and we’ve moved from blogging to newsletters. I look at my inbox and it’s full of the newsletters I subscribe to, waiting for me to marshal enough brain cells together to be able to read and appreciate them, as opposed to scanning them for helpful bits of info and then hitting the delete button. I like saving them up and reading them in one pass, which I hear from some of you is what you do with mine!
(People usually are apologetic when they share that with me but I do not think that is a bad thing! I appreciate that people value it so much they want to save it for when they can focus!)
But the fact remains that this is now where we are, and we’re all passing around the same $5-10 to various newsletter subscriptions.
My new rule is that if I am making a point to read a newsletter and I get something out of it, I become a paid subscriber, at least for a couple of months, or throw money in the tip jar if they have one.
My second rule is to make sure I am not just liking people’s posts on social media, but I am reposting them with a comment about why I liked the post or why I read the newsletter. That is the way people get new subscribers. It’s 30 seconds of extra effort. Please consider this the next time you think about smashing the heart button. There’s no algorithm on Bluesky so liking a post doesn’t help it. There is nothing that makes me sadder after working hard on a piece and then seeing a whole bunch of likes and zero reposts.
Finally, some of these people are on Substack. I want to acknowledge that it is a problematic company but there is no company that is not problematic and writers did not create the problem. Most writers want to write, they don’t want to have to worry about deliverability or open rate, no one wants to have to be writing code or making sure that the CMS is up to date or paying for server space.
When the whole “Substack Writers Against Nazis” thing happened I was a signatory, but I did not move because I did not have time to move. I was not going to be bullied into making technology commitments I might regret later. I took my time, did a platform analysis (a skill from my former day jobs), did research, talked to people, ran some tests, and then made a decision to move to Ghost – and then did the work of moving. (Before someone pipes up that “Ghost will do that for you” they used to offer to migrate people but now it seems like that offer is only for people with large lists. That said, the migration tools they have are very good, though, and their support has been fantastic).
If it sounds like that took a lot of (unpaid) time, it did. I resented being yelled at to “just” move to Wordpress and that it was “easy” when I’d spent two years and change working for one of the biggest WP shops in the world and knew perfectly well that it wasn’t the right technology solution for what I needed. And every person who insists they cannot pay for a newsletter on Substack bc Nazis should be required to prove they aren’t a subscriber to Patti Smith’s newsletter. No one is yelling at her to get off Substack.
Amy Rigby - Diary of Amy Rigby
Amy's newsletter is a long, comfortable story about the gritty details of what it’s like being a working musician: being on the road, playing shows, making records, and the day-to-day minutiae that ties all of it together. I’ve been reading Amy since she was doing this on Blogspot, annoyed that I missed being her neighbor in Greenpoint by a couple of years. She does the kind of diaristic writing that I’d like to do, but am absolutely certain is completely pointless and boring as soon as I write something in that vein. I like reading her so I am a paid subscriber, but I also became a paid subscriber because she is an artist whose work I appreciate and wish to encourage, and since I can’t always see her play, this is a good way to do those things.
Gina Arnold wrote both the 33 ⅓ on Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville and the infamous (at least in my circle of people) Route 666: On The Road to Nirvana, but her newsletter is one of those things that I read and then feel completely unqualified to do what I do. This piece she wrote about my beloved Afghan Whigs is a good example:
See, the Afghan Whigs are my favorite band of all time ever. That might surprise you, because I don't really talk about them, in the same way I don't talk or write that much about my love of diving. Nothing I could write would make anyone want to do high diving, and in the same way, I can't think of the words to convince people to like the Afghan Whigs. Nor do I even want them too, in the same way I wouldn't want someone to fall in love with a man I was in love with. That would just complicate things.
The details in her PJ Harvey essay are phenomenal, there aren’t a lot of people whose opinions on Big Star I would care about reading, and similarly appreciated her take on the Mellencamp/Willie/Bob Outlaw festival. I feel like I’m getting the benefit of her teaching without having to take a class from her. She isn’t charging for her newsletter but I will pay for it whenever she does.
Charlotte Freeman: Getting Dirty: Material Entanglement in the Anthropocene
I have absolutely zero idea how I connected to Charlotte on Twitter but she’s the kind of person I’d love to have coffee with. She lives in Montana and writes about nature and gentrification and materiality. Like me, she moved to a different place in order to forge a more sustainable life, except instead of Detroit, she moved to Montana, and at this point I know about her walks and her dog and her small cabin and the changes that have come to Livingston post-COVID. Her way of life is slower than mine and you can feel it in the pace of her thoughts and her writing. If we hadn’t been mutuals I probably wouldn’t have subscribed to her newsletter back in the day but I’m always so glad when it arrives because I learn something and it makes me think.
In the very early days of Twitter, one of the groups of folks I followed was a bunch of Brooklyn literary folk that I befriended around the time my first novel came out. I was kind of slumming, because I wasn’t really a novelist or any kind of literary figure but back in the early days of social media none of that seemed to matter. If you could hang, you could hang.
I loved Alex's novels but his essay collection, How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, is a book I still think about. My subscription to his newsletter was one of those oh of course I follow this person and think they’re cool and enjoy their work things but after a couple in a row where I needed to go take a walk around the block so I had space to think about what I’d just read, I realized I was being kinda hypocritical by not being a paid subscriber to something that I clearly got a lot of value out of.
Kathy Valentine: The Direction of Motion
Yes, it is that Kathy Valentine, Go-Go, punk rock icon, guitar hero. Kathy’s memoir, All I Ever Wanted, came out on University of Texas Press and I was lucky enough to be able to convince her to do a book event with me in Austin. Her newsletter is personal, poignant, and intimate; she took us through love and death and life as a musician and a move to the UK (heads up - and I speak from experience - being an expat is not an easy thing to do). Her posts are substantial, meaty, thoughtful and with the kind of disarming honesty I could never do but admire in other people.
Charles Hughes and David Cantwell: No Fences Review
I met Charles Hughes at the very first Springsteen symposium, back in 2005, when we were on the same panel, moderated by Dave Marsh. My paper was on Bruce Springsteen and Punk Rock. I don’t know how we ended up together but I’m super glad we did. I met David Cantwell online at some point, the fellowship of music writers on social media kind of thing. Their partnership is underappreciated because they make each other smarter, better, funnier. They’re incredibly smart people and this newsletter lets them take advantage of their knowledge. There are weekly general roundups but where I most appreciate the newsletter is when someone passes and instead of having to try to figure out what I should be listening to, I can just get advice from them, and get a great retrospective on Kris Kristofferson or enjoy getting the benefit of Charles’ love of Ronnie Lane (someone who I hate that I never got to see live). They’ve been candid about their Rock Hall nominations, they shine the light on other writers, and so obviously love what they do.
Happy holidays and wishing you all a happy new year. I appreciate your support.
