The newsletter gurus vs. me
A friend got in touch recently to let me know that she hadn’t been receiving any issues of my newsletter.
“There’s a very good reason for that,” I told her. “It’s because I haven’t written any.”
I then went on to explain the logic behind my publishing schedule (or, in this case, my non-publishing schedule). I thought I’d share my thinking with you, too, just in case you’re wondering why I haven’t exactly been filling up your in-box with messages lately.
That was then; this is now
Back in 2018 when I launched my very first newsletter, I forced myself to stick to a rather punishing publication schedule (punishing for me as the writer and punishing, I’m sure, for my readers). I made a point of showing up in people’s in-boxes every single week. Because I was publishing a couple of different newsletters at the time, this meant that a lot of people were hearing from me at least twice each week. It felt like overkill to me, but I stuck with the schedule because the newsletter gurus kept insisting I had to do it. “If you don’t show up in people’s in-boxes often enough, they’ll forget all about you,” they warned.
I kept up the pace for a couple of years. Then I started to recognize just how much time and energy was going into producing each issue of my newsletter — energy that might otherwise be invested in other creative projects and/or life. That’s when I decided to ignore the advice of the newsletter gurus and simply do what made sense to me: publishing on a much more erratic basis.
This is why you don’t hear from me very often. I only put out an issue of my newsletter when it feels like I actually have something to say. In a world that’s overflowing with noise, I’m okay with being quiet for prolonged periods of time.
Besides, some of the writers I admire most adhere to the same schedule. Jenny Odell, for example, only published two issues of her newsletter in 2023 and hasn’t published a single issue this year. Do I forget about her? Impossible. If anything, I think about her more often when I don’t hear from her. Her silence makes me curious about what she might be working on. And when she does send out an issue of her newsletter, I immediately devour every single word of it because I know she has something important to say, a specific reason for breaking her silence.
This will continue to be my approach to writing this newsletter: only getting in touch occasionally. I want to enjoy writing to you and I want you to look forward with excitement rather than dread when you spot an email from me in your inbox.
Coming up next
All that said, you will be hearing me twice in the next two weeks. I’m eager to share the extended play version of a couple of interviews I did for my most recent blog post for Psychology Today, which is all about living a creative life at midlife and beyond. I ended up interviewing two people for that article and I was only able to share a fraction of their wisdom, given the word count limit for my blog. I hope you’ll keep an eye out for those two upcoming Q&As.
- Ann Douglas