First, a huge thank you to everyone who became a paid subscriber after I shared this essay:
I’m so excited for what we’re going to do together in the coming year (see below!).
On that note, I have two class offerings starting in January if you want to work together more closely in the new year:
This memoir generator at Writing Workshops will help you kick-start your manuscript in the new year with a small, supportive group of writers. Lost of feedback, weekly meetings, one-on-ones with me, workshops, guided writing, and community. Open to traditional memoirists, as well as those incorporating reporting, cultural critique, literary texts, or other research (and those who are still figuring it out!). This is like dropping into an MFA program for 8 weeks. Apply by January 1.
I’m also teaching this 10-week nonfiction writing course at Stanford (open to the public). We’ll use Vivian Gornick’s incredible craft text The Situation and the Story as we study and write essays and memoir. Special guest will be THE Maggie Smith!
I also have a new interview up at Guernica, and you can listen to me on this episode of the podcast Fresh Story.
When I started writing here in the middle of the pandemic, it was as an experiment in regular public production, but I was also, in truth, longing for so much at that time. I was fearful about my future, both as a writer and teacher, watching myself slip into a domestic whirlpool. I felt an incredible urgency not only to get my work back into my hands and out into the world, but to be in conversation.
Since then, this platform has evolved in some great ways, and in some upsetting ways (see here and here). Despite a plethora of recent “how to make it on Substack” pieces, the formula has been pretty clear from the beginning. If you had a big following on Twitter or some other media platform, as a general rule that translated to Substack. If you followed that up with great writing that was published regularly, your newsletter grew. If you also found a way to build a community that felt like a respite from the growing discord and paranoia taking over every other place on the internet, that helped, too.
I did not bring a massive following with me here. I had been parenting two young kids, trying to write a dissertation, adjuncting, and divesting from social media ever since I left Facebook in 2016. Which means that this publication has grown solely because readers have shared my work over the years. I attribute much of the success of Touched Out to this community. Those of you who have been here since the beginning, along with those who have recently found Mad Woman, you are responsible for making this corner of the internet what it is today, and in many ways, you are responsible for what I have been able to do with my writing in other spaces.
Many of you are former students; some read my writing elsewhere and followed the breadcrumbs. Some are fellow authors who have consistently lifted up my work. But all of you came looking, I suspect, for the same thing I did: a space to connect, converse, reject, rage, empathize, articulate, clarify, create, nuance, laugh, feel. A place to explore and feel a little less crazy, to think through books and culture and the many backlashes and crisis points we’ve moved through in recent years, and are still moving through. In the process, we’ve created a community that counters the incessant noise and the inadequacy of other publications to meet those moments. We’ve kept each other going.
I haven’t always been very intentional about cultivating that community. I’ve organized people around creativity since I was a little baby writer, putting on readings and events and things, but I gave much of that up when I retreated into my home after becoming a Mom, and I didn’t have much sense of how I wanted to bring any of that work here when I started. To be honest, I just wanted to write, and to be read.
Even so, when I started writing here, every time I published something I went into a little tailspin of self-hatred and doubt. Over time, my feelings about the thinking, writing, and communing I do here have come more and more into focus. Because I am a woman who has always tended to undercut herself so as to not seem like that kind of woman, it’s important to say that the writing I’ve published here has also played a role in the growth of this space. I spend many hours on everything I send to you. But I have also come to embrace how everything I write here remains a work-in-progress, an undone thing: a thought or perspective or question I am thinking about out loud, sometimes off the cuff, in a very public way.
This has been confronting for me, as both a writer and a person. But this work is also inseparable, in my mind, from a feminist writing practice—it’s an important counter to the kinds of writing we are exposed to every day: fix-it service pieces on literally everything, even when it’s clear so much is by-design fucked; supposedly neutral writing that always comes with an agenda. It’s a counter to the masculine forms that shape how we view creative and intellectual work too: the phallic, unilateral arguments; the cleanliness of the hero’s journey; the isolation and individualism and totality of the male genius. Countering these genres of thought and creativity is the real value, I think, of the diaristic, bloggy, personal writing you see on this platform, whatever its future may be.
But so is that sense of community. Since this newsletter began, I have developed relationships with many writers doing incredible things on this platform and we support each other regularly. This year, Touched Out was released and I received a deluge of notes in all my inboxes from readers thanking me for giving them the language they needed to connect the parts of their lives. And then there’s all of you! The world is utterly precarious and violent and terrible right now, and there are no silver linings to that, but there are spaces that push us along, even when things are really heavy—that connect us across the ether, when the world feels insufferable. And I want to cultivate that feeling even more in the coming year.
Diarist Anaïs Nin, who in some ways foretold this era, once wrote this sentiment, which captures well how I once thought of this newsletter, and how I think of it now:
The diary was once a disease. I do not take it up now for the same reasons. Before it was because I was lonely, or because I did not know how to communicate with others. I needed the communion. Now it is to write, not for solace but for the pleasure of describing others, out of abundance.
Here’s what you can expect next year:
My regular weekly column—essays, criticism, and interviews on books, pop culture, and other timely subjects—will always be free, even though this is where the bulk of my time spent on this newsletter goes; these essays are free not because I don’t value my work or see it as work, but because it allows me to keep the writing that you read here somewhat guarded from the influence of monetizing it (i.e. you will never get an essay in your inbox that is “10 tips and tricks to solve your life… or whatever”)
Every paid subscriber, however, is a patron of the writing I am able to do here and elsewhere, and I will still be offering little treats to paid subscribers because I’m so grateful for them/you. Having a paywalled side of this newsletter also keeps out the bad actors.
Some of the new features I’m working on for paid subscribers in 2024:
Paid subscribers will continue to get a weekly roundup of links and criticism, including books and things I’m watching or trying to bake, and reflections on what I’m writing or otherwise working to untangle
Essays that are more personal will still be behind a paywall, only accessible to paid subscribers, which protects me
Commenting and community privileges will also still be behind a paywall, only accessible to paid subscribers, which protects you, by keeping our conversations alt-right- and incel-free
We’ll also have weekly threads to connect and discuss, again protected by the paywall to allow us to have a discussion within this community, rather than with randos who just drop by to explain things to us
You’ll get full access to the archive
There will be live virtual events, again protected by the paywall to keep randos out
You’ll also get a discount on my new podcast (!)— details soon!!
If you’d like to get in on all this for a full year, I’m offering a discount to anyone who signs up for an annual subscription before January 1.
AND! For writers, artists, and other creative people who want to make shit in community—either as a compliment to classes they are taking, or as a way to wedge creativity into their everyday lives—I’m also working on a new subscription tier (previously called the “founding level”).
You’ll get:
Discounts on writing classes
Monthly craft essays with a syllabus of relevant readings and a writing prompt, with space to discuss
Threads each week where you can share what you’re working on, connect with other writers and artists, and exchange resources
Two virtual residencies per year for all genres and mediums, one in the spring, and one in the fall—these will include optional co-working sessions, creative prompts, and community threads
Right now, these annual founding tier subscriptions are also 20% off:
Until January 1, I also have the pay-what-you-can option turned on for this program, which means you can sign up at a sliding scale rate, based on what you can afford (anywhere from $50-$200 for the full year).
Either of these subscriptions are great gifts, ofc!
And as always, if you want a paid subscription and you cannot afford one, you can reply to this newsletter in your inbox and I will comp you one, no questions asked. If you want to donate a subscription, you can do that, too:
In the coming weeks, I’ll be be sharing some reruns of essays from the archive as I get all this good stuff in order, but I’m really excited to connect with you all more in the coming year.
GOD I want to do this writing course.
I’m so bummed I can’t make your course! I have the book and everything. I hope I can make the next one that is open to the public. So excited to see and engage with what’s to come 💖