A More Bespoke Dialogue — mnchrm vol. xxix
If you enjoyed this dispatch, please consider forwarding it or sharing it with a friend. If you were sent this from someone and would like a copy of the next letter for your very own, I'd love to have you subscribe here. Thank you!
Incoming Transmission —
Hello friends! This letter comes to you from about a third of the way up the Hancock building, in Chicago. The Sun has just set, or at least dipped behind the skyscrapers at my back, though for the past half hour or so I was watching it set from the windows overlooking the lake. They say the distance to the horizon standing at the water's edge is just under five kilometers — no idea how far it is from this height. It looks to be practically at eye level, as if the water has risen to meet my gaze.
I haven't been very good about sending this letter out so far, in 2019. My thought was that without any new writing on my blog to send out, the purpose of the letter was diminished. I don't feel this way any more. Now it seems the letter is a valuable dispatch in itself, of itself. In fact, perhaps this letter is somehow more valuable without something to be shared, as a means of keeping in touch, and a reason to write for an audience.
This letter, for the first time, is coming to you from TinyLetter, a company owned by MailChimp (which I used to send out the previous letters) designed to facilitate smaller, more intimate posts. If you've received the past few letters, you'll see I've been trying to strip back as much of the formatting as possible, and get closer to the words on the page. I wasn't using any of the marketing or analytics MailChimp offers, and I'm not close to the 5,000 subscriber limit for TinyLetter. So, what do you think? Is it a change for the better, for the worse, or something you don't notice at all?
Part of my shift in perception about writing online is a change in what I value. Before, I cared most about the number of eyes my pieces got, the number of people who read it and shared it to others who read it some more. Of course, I still want to be widely read — I think it would take a certain sort of monastic writer to not care at all about this.
However, in the pieces I've put a lot of heart into lately, the thing that's made me feel the best about writing them (aside from the act of completing the draft!) has been the incredible responses and interactions from someone who read it. I wrote an article for the blog about storytelling in videogames, which lead to a great conversation both in the comments of the page and off with my friend Ash. In a series of posts on Reading Supply, I wrote about the next photo-sharing social network and what that might look like. This lead to some great conversations with Reading Supply founder Jim, which you can read inline with the article. I really feel as though our discussion of the text is as valuable as the text itself. Not only do responses make me feel good, they add perspectives and value to an otherwise singular piece. I'd rather write a piece with only a handful of reads that generates a good conversations than a silent piece read by thousands.
I think that's part of the interesting thing about email and newsletters: the ability to reply is an inherent part of the tech. You can hit that reply button and send me a response directly, in a way that is difficult and far more impersonal on most other platforms. Even a newsletter like this, sent to dozens of people, still has a more intimate and personal feeling than a blog post, or an article online. There's something about it that feels slightly magic; perhaps simply that it's direct.
Anyways, this is just meant to be a refresher, a reopening of the dialogue. I'll incorporate some of the forms of the past letters into the next one, which will hit your inboxes this Sunday.
As always, thanks for reading. I'd love to hear what you think, and can't wait to see where this conversation leads us.
Your faithful commander,
— I
Incoming Transmission —
Hello friends! This letter comes to you from about a third of the way up the Hancock building, in Chicago. The Sun has just set, or at least dipped behind the skyscrapers at my back, though for the past half hour or so I was watching it set from the windows overlooking the lake. They say the distance to the horizon standing at the water's edge is just under five kilometers — no idea how far it is from this height. It looks to be practically at eye level, as if the water has risen to meet my gaze.
I haven't been very good about sending this letter out so far, in 2019. My thought was that without any new writing on my blog to send out, the purpose of the letter was diminished. I don't feel this way any more. Now it seems the letter is a valuable dispatch in itself, of itself. In fact, perhaps this letter is somehow more valuable without something to be shared, as a means of keeping in touch, and a reason to write for an audience.
This letter, for the first time, is coming to you from TinyLetter, a company owned by MailChimp (which I used to send out the previous letters) designed to facilitate smaller, more intimate posts. If you've received the past few letters, you'll see I've been trying to strip back as much of the formatting as possible, and get closer to the words on the page. I wasn't using any of the marketing or analytics MailChimp offers, and I'm not close to the 5,000 subscriber limit for TinyLetter. So, what do you think? Is it a change for the better, for the worse, or something you don't notice at all?
Part of my shift in perception about writing online is a change in what I value. Before, I cared most about the number of eyes my pieces got, the number of people who read it and shared it to others who read it some more. Of course, I still want to be widely read — I think it would take a certain sort of monastic writer to not care at all about this.
However, in the pieces I've put a lot of heart into lately, the thing that's made me feel the best about writing them (aside from the act of completing the draft!) has been the incredible responses and interactions from someone who read it. I wrote an article for the blog about storytelling in videogames, which lead to a great conversation both in the comments of the page and off with my friend Ash. In a series of posts on Reading Supply, I wrote about the next photo-sharing social network and what that might look like. This lead to some great conversations with Reading Supply founder Jim, which you can read inline with the article. I really feel as though our discussion of the text is as valuable as the text itself. Not only do responses make me feel good, they add perspectives and value to an otherwise singular piece. I'd rather write a piece with only a handful of reads that generates a good conversations than a silent piece read by thousands.
I think that's part of the interesting thing about email and newsletters: the ability to reply is an inherent part of the tech. You can hit that reply button and send me a response directly, in a way that is difficult and far more impersonal on most other platforms. Even a newsletter like this, sent to dozens of people, still has a more intimate and personal feeling than a blog post, or an article online. There's something about it that feels slightly magic; perhaps simply that it's direct.
Anyways, this is just meant to be a refresher, a reopening of the dialogue. I'll incorporate some of the forms of the past letters into the next one, which will hit your inboxes this Sunday.
As always, thanks for reading. I'd love to hear what you think, and can't wait to see where this conversation leads us.
Your faithful commander,
— I
Don't miss what's next. Subscribe to Monochromatic Aberration: