Hustle

Rejecting strategic subscriber foraging

My role model in anti-hustling, who does this all day while I’m getting work done.

I refuse to hustle.¹

I am pro-work. I like to work. As you might guess from the title of this newsletter, I’m all about doing the work.

For me, that means sitting down to write, to dream, and to play. It means doing a job I love and that I’m good at.² It’s hard, a lot of the time, but if I give myself over to it, there is an internal fire that keeps me going. Doing the work can also mean meditating, stretching, going for a walk in solitude, reading, baking bread, or just about anything that’s me doing something or making something. Writing = creation = being alive.

Sitting down to write, because I have to, because I love it, and doing it over and over—that’s for me first. That’s drive, not hustle. When people talk about hustling, they are often talking about other people, the work you do in relation to other people. Hustle by creating content, influencing, making offerings.

Every time I post something to this space, I lose a few subscribers. It makes me happy in a weird sort of way. If someone gets an email from me and thinks, “oh, I don’t want this,” then I absolutely want them to unsubscribe. I don’t want to be a burden in anyone’s inbox. If, every time you hear from me, you sigh inwardly and delete or hate read, please, unsubscribe! (If every time you hear from me, you are excited and enthusiastic, go ahead and tell other people about this newsletter, or consider upgrading to paid, that makes me happy too.)

If I was hustling, I would be concerned with growing my subscribers and followers and might change this space to cater to everyone else. And, listen, that’s a viable path. If people want to do that, I’m not judging. I just know that I do not want to do that. I want to cater to myself first, to my creativity first. I want to be able to prioritize the books I’m writing instead of prioritizing subscribers and followers. I have idly thought about stopping this newsletter, wondering if it’s hustle-adjacent for me, if it is too close to people-pleasing, in a way that keeps me from really going all in on fiction writing. But the fact is I have a lot of thoughts about creativity, especially in these modern (hustling, distracted) times, and a newsletter is a fine place to put these essays. I appreciate that

Substack

has made a space where writers can write and get visibility without having to hustle in order to play the algorithm game. At the same time, a lot of the talk among writers with Substacks (and from Substack itself) is about how to get more subscribers. For now, I’m trying to ignore advice that’s about calculated hustling for subscribers, and listening instead to those who talk about consistently writing good essays. That sounds more fun to me. If my separation from social media has taught me anything, it’s that strategically posting to get clicks or followers, eyeballs or mentions, completely screws with my ability to step away from the internet and write good things.

And so I will not hustle, but I will continue to be driven. My writing goals have to do with writing more, making more great books, writing great and thought-provoking essays, not gaining followers.

But.

My writing goals also have to do with getting paid to write. How does it all overlap – the hustling, the drive, the follower count, the walk in solitude, the time I spent on the floor of my writing shed yesterday outlining a novel – with getting paid? I highly recommend reading this recent post from

Jodi Meadows

about this. Because I don’t get paid for walking in the woods, except maybe I do, because I’m writing in my head (or sometimes on the index card I keep in my pocket) and also solitude and time away from my desk is an antidote to burnout and writer's block. I write better things when I give myself time and when I'm not stressed out about the writing, and if I write better things, they’re more likely to get made into books, and more like to sell more when they do. Plus slowing down makes me more open to any ideas flowing to me.

Plotting.

But also! I need to make money now. Book publishing is not a “make money now!” business, which is why I write here and made an online class about how to revise a picture book. And honestly I’m not sure where that line is, between listening to and acting on my creative intuition, and hustling for subscribers and book buyers and online class participants.

So – there is a part of me, for sure, that is urging me to work really fast. There is, though, a much louder part of me that is saying that slower, methodical, consistent, and driven work – with lots of breaks – is the human-paced work life that not only makes sense but is truly the way for me to succeed.

What are your thoughts? Do you spend time getting followers and subscribers? Did it work? Do you consider it part of the business of writing? How do you shift between gathering subscribers in little baskets and bringing them to your internet world and gathering ideas in other little baskets and bringing them to your creative world? Because really, that’s what I struggle with.

Behind the Paywall

Part 3 of the let’s-work-our-way-through-a-college-creative-writing-textbook project is going up in a week or two. I’m reading a textbook called Dreams and Inward Journeys and crafting assignments for us all to dive deeper into who we are as writers, where we want our writing to go, and what we want our characters to do. The assignments work for any kind of writing, and it’s all optional. Maybe you just do the readings. Maybe you do one assignment, maybe you do them all. It’s fun! Here are parts 1 and 2:

To Write is to Dream

The Secret to Better Writing

Thoughts and Links

• Happy Pride Month! I love the rainbow Maine flag from Flags for Good that we now have flying in front of our house. I got it at Print (like…almost everything else in my house? but that’s just because most of my house is books).

• These templates from Holisticism are handy, offering language for you to politely say no. Choose what sounds most like your situation and makes you breathe a sigh of relief, customize as needed, and hit send. (I think they’re from Holisticism? Holisticism linked to them in one of their emails. I’m not sure if they made them or not.)

• I love the concept of highlighters but not the practice. I find them distracting. But I’m tempted by two I learned about recently (not because I think they’ll make me love highlighting, but because they’re cool and innovative): the Ninipie, which has a thin writing tip canted out at a jaunty angle from the highlighting part; and the beetle tip, a 3-way pen that can do thick, thin, and double lines.³

• I laughed so much listening to yesterday’s episode of Maintenance Phase (Conservative Diet Books of Yore). I’m not the first person to tell you that this podcast is great, but: it’s great.

Books I read recently and loved

Disclosure: book links in this newsletter are affiliate links to Bookshop.org, a site which supports independent bookshops.

I read a lot of adult fiction this month:

• I’ll confess I had no idea what Hamnet was about, only that I’d heard it’s great. I’m not sure I would have bought it otherwise, considering the subtitle “A Novel of the Plague.” I’m so glad I did. I loved it.

• Everyone is talking about how great Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld is! They are all correct! There was a part about 40 pages in that made me laugh so much, not only laugh out loud in that sort of “ha” you do when you read something funny, but truly, fully laugh. And then I shoved it at Ramona to make her read that page. And then I declared that even if the book was awful for the rest of it, it would have been worth the price I paid for it, just for that page. But good news! The rest of the book was a delight!

• I read Ghost Wall and was completely in awe of everything about it. I love a book where I’m thinking, “I don’t know anything about any of this” and also can’t stop reading because I have to know what’s going to happen next.

• This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub is a perfect novel. I love a story where I adore the characters and would follow them anywhere and it makes me feel big feelings. This is that! (Actually, all of this month’s books are that, now that I’m looking at them.)

  

1. The incessant working, I mean. I don’t do the hustle, the dance, either, but I would. Yes to dancing, no to striving toward burnout because we’re told it’s the only way.

2. In case it’s not clear, I mean writing. Writing is the job. Is it a job, though? Or does it suffer from too much vocational awe to ever make money? (That link is to an article by Simone Stolzoff, author of The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work, about all these jobs that we say are a “calling” and then don’t pay those jobs very much money. I’ve done three of the jobs mentioned: writer, teacher, and librarian. I don’t know what that says about me. Or about jobs.)

3. Yesterday I had to order more pen refills, and I caved and ordered an orange beetle tip. I’ll let you know if it’s life changing in any way! Or if it’s just super fun to use!