I’ve been thinking a lot about the marketing email vs the essay. The personal essay vs the promotional missive. The email subject line that says You’ll never believe this …. just so you open the email. I’ve been thinking a lot about days off, weeks off, hours off, time off. How do you save and vision and plan for a social media detox, a newsletter hiatus, or an overall pause in teaching? How does an artist take time off and how is time off different than a retreat or a residency? Taking time off from one thing doesn’t mean we have to take time off from everything. What you’ll never believe from this workaholic is : I am planning to take a month off.

My job is to be a writer, my devotional practice is to be a writer, my longing is to be a writer. Yet there are so many hidden factors to the trade. Be really good at making up a subject line, make sure the tagline is also catchy but very clear, think of things to write about, don’t be too specific, don’t be too vague, tell them just enough, give them a deal, don’t give too many deals, write from the heart, not too close to the heart though.

Send the email, promote the email, respond to the emails, let them comment, respond to the comments, don’t respond to all the comments because then you won’t have time to write. Let the people into your process but don’t let them too far in because they are strangers. Some of them are your students though so they aren’t complete strangers in fact they have become peers and readers and sacred parts of the ecosystem of care and business. The art of boundaries in parasocial relationships has its own system of fine tuning.