If July was all about travel and community, from my MFA residency in Tacoma, WA to my family reunion in southern Oregon, August is all about staying home and walking in the forest. Even if that is not exactly how the month has gone.
While I did walk in the forest this month—we had a few visits from a Great Horned Owl—the past four weeks contained much more activity than merely idle strolls. The days filled with guests, a mural festival, a brews cruise, concerts, and caring for my mother as she recovers from knee surgery. I also got back to work on my Armenian family manuscript.
Work: On a Zoom meeting with a group of writers, one of them talked about making a mid-life career change. Writing became her new career. Not a passion or a vocation, though writing might also be those things to her, but a career. She was being deliberate in pursuing her new career, in carving out a place for her writing in the world, in the paying market world. And her efforts were, shall we say, paying off. Writing is not a hobby for me, she said.
Writing is not a hobby for me either. Though neither is it a career, certainly not one that comes with a paycheck. Writing for me is the thing I can’t not do. The thing I must do, which is a less clunky way of putting it, but the double negative more honestly conveys what writing is to me, what writing, or not writing, feels like. A hollow space in my chest waiting to be filled with the pressure of my fingertips on the keyboard. The whirring of gears in my head waiting to be put to use in the form of words flowing, or plopping or dripping, onto the page. The spin of despair in my gut slowed by the attention to story.
Is writing a career if you aren’t getting paid? Or is that a vocation? Or even an identity? The thing you are because you do the thing. The thing without which you are not yourself.
Wonder: This month I’m wondering, again, if I should move my blog to Substack, a newsletter platform with content ranging from straight newsletters to blogs to literary journals accepting submissions. Besides sending out my blog to subscribers, as I do now, on Substack’s website my blog would be more visible and easier to find by a wider range of readers. Substack has an active writing community and I’d like to be a part of that scene, I think.
I hesitate for a few reasons. One, I have great affection for my blog which started on my then brand-new website in October 2015. My blog and my website were public declarations: I am a writer, and they helped me feel like a writer even when the writing was a struggle. Two, Substack’s tagline is “a new economic engine for culture.” While writers can choose to keep their newsletters/blogs free to subscribers, they can also monetize content. Substack is free to use; they make their money by taking a cut from writers who have monetized all or part of their Substack content. I’m not seeking income with my blog but connection and conversation. So is Substack the right platform for me? Three, I worry that some of my current subscribers will feel abandoned, and/or won’t take the time (we’re all short of time!) to subscribe to a new platform. Finally, moving my blog to Substack is yet another thing that would take time away from the writing of my Armenian family book, essays, and this blog.
What do you think—blog on my website or Substack? Any insights or concerns I haven’t considered?
Windows: This month ended with new windows to gaze out of while boating in the San Juan Islands on our 19’ C-Dory.
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