Hello friends,

Oops, I did it again. I went mildly viral on Substack, a place that Wasn’t a Social Media Platform™, until they recently admitted that oh yeah lol it is isn’t it, silly us.

I went all 2012-era Buzzfeed on everyone and wrote a list on my Notes feed. It contained five things I have learned about consistently publishing a newsletter for a whole year, whilst possessing this wavy brain of mine.

In the Great British spirit of ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’, I’m going to repurpose this content now and elaborate a bit on each point.

Here you go then, buckle up buckeroos.

‘Things I Have Learned As A Neurodivergent Person Who Strings Sentences Together About Whatever and Sends Them Out To Hundreds Of Strangers On The Regular’

by Ren Riley, aged 33 and a bit

Very few people remember to leave a like if they enjoyed your work.

The bastards! I joke. Who’s got the time or attention span to remember to leave a like?

I merrily go through my day scrolling the Notes feed reading the newsletters on the Substack app and don’t so much as grunt if I enjoyed the words of the poor writer most of the time. Mainly because I get distracted easily.

Try and be mindful of your rejection sensitivity. As someone who is lucky enough to experience it1, I have to frequently remind myself that it’s not about me. The lack of engagement on some posts tells me jack about the quality of my writing.

Stop relying on analytics for your self-worth, Renwald (Ren isn’t short for Renwald but it’d be funny if it was).

There will be many people who read your work religiously, enjoy it, and never like, comment or make themselves known to you. Let them live in peace to read and grunt at their leisure! Their silence is not a judgement on you or your work.

You will have a bajillion ideas for newsletters and this will translate into a bajillion unfinished drafts with weird titles like ‘Ranking the best biscuits’ and ‘Bette Midler, that’s it that’s the title’.

Yep, these are two actual drafts on my Substack dashboard just waiting to be written. I have around 50 unfinished newsletters. Yes, it often gives me mega anxiety when I look at them.

“Give me words Ren!” they cry, “Why did you name us and then abandon us?”

As a proud AuDHDer, I have left a trail of starving Tamagotchis, slurring Furbies, and a thousand dried-up felt tip pens with missing lids in the wake of my chaos. Ghosting 50 newsletters is small fry, quite frankly.

I will get round to writing these newsletters. All in good time. The Bette Midler one is nearly done, and the biscuits one will be a Christmas treat for you all.

But until th-… wow, is that a shiny new subject? Better start a new draft.

You will miss your own self-imposed deadlines and that is fine because they were literally self-imposed and no one cares when you post.

You know those Substack ‘gurus’ that claim to know all these ‘hacks’ to help you send a newsletter to everyone on Earth, unlock early retirement and solve world peace? They always tell you to post at the same time every week because the algorithm likes it or some such technocrap.

Personally, I don’t buy it. I send my newsletters out at a different time and day each week (because I have the discipline of a slinky rolling down the stairs and the excitability of a bichon frise) and yet they receive pretty much the same number of readers each time.

I also love to surprise my readers. They never know when I’m about to jump out of a metaphorical bush with ravings about my grey hair, Gemma Collins, autistic pies or whatever it is I write about here.

You will press post and spot a typo every single time because it’s tradition.

I have worked in PR since I graduated over a decade ago. My job is literally to make sure that words are spelled correctly. And yet, every damn time I send this newsletter out, there it is, a typo. The audacity of it.

It used to wind me up but now I see it as a tradition. Instead of wanting to tear my grey hair out, I now feel the warm fuzzies when I once again practice the sacred tradition of forgetting to use a spell checker.

This coping mechanism is helpful in other aspects of my life, such as:

“I can’t buy a house because it’s traditional for millennials to not be able to afford one.”

“My sciatica is making me want to place myself in the recycling bin because it’s traditional for my hip to start flaring when I am stressed.”

“The cat has cost me hundreds of pounds in vets fees because it’s traditional for him to behave like he’s the one with ADHD.”

I admit it, the right wingers are correct2, tradition is FUN!3

You will inevitably find the wonderful community of autistic, ADHD and neurodivergent at large folks on Substack. You will read and appreciate their insights. You may feel less alone and a part of something good.

I mean this as sincerely as I can be (which doesn’t happen often so savour it). I have loved and am loving being able to connect with other neurodivergent people from across the globe.

Over 750 folks once decided to click ‘subscribe’ on this newsletter (wild). Many of them will forget they subscribed, or they’ll delete Substack, or their circumstances will change, or their tastes will improve, and they’ll leave. That’s ok because there are loads of people in the world who could potentially read my work. Moreover, there’s loads of people in the world I could potentially be friends with. I find this fact rather comforting.

So there we have it, there’s my top five things I have learned in the past 12 months about newsletter writing while wavy-brained.

What would you add to the list?

Thanks for reading. Have a great week and see you at the next one.

Take it easy,

Ren