I enjoyed this Ramona, even if to some extent I disagree. Or I agree that you should but your best work up front, polished to perfection.
But at the same time, I'm interested with the idea of writing with the door open, or keeping an open workshop/laboratory (to use different metaphors).I've seen a few people do things like this here.
And I've set up a "First Draft" section to my stack for my word salads. It's mostly there to keep me accountable (if I know someone might be reading, I'm more likely to be writing and writing more cogent things). But at the same time I don't expect anyone to be interested and although I hit publish I don't punish anyone by sending it to anyone's inboxes!
It's just an experiment, but I'm curious about experimenting with blurring those lines in writing.
There's nothing wrong with free-form writing. It can be quite interesting--almost like poetry. But it's not the stuff of journals. The writing we do in our journals is rife with self-indulgence--as it should be. They're our own private sessions meant only for our eyes. If they're anything other than that they're not doing the job.
I go to my journal when something is bothering me, or when I'm especially proud of something I've done but I don't feel the need to brag about it elsewhere. My journal is my confessional. I can be me in my journal and nobody will be judging or laughing at me.
I couldn't do that in my blog, nor would I want to.
Maybe I missed the point here, but I think we do ourselves a favor if we stick to journaling privately, without a thought that anyone will ever read it. It's possibly the only place we can really be ourselves.
I definitely see how that may often be the case, but I don't think it is a hard rule.
I'm spent a lifetime journalling, and maybe I'm doing it wrong but I don't always know myself better through my private writing. Perhaps because it is self-indulgent and private, I find my ideas become muddy and opaque. Writing to someone, like this now, is much more clarifying, much for fulfilling.
So even if the other person doesn't read it, the act of journalling to someone or in public, seems to help me understand my thoughts and my writing better.
There are no hard rules. Not here, anyway. My original premise is that journal writing is too personal and often too boring to convert it into a blog. That's all.
I agree I get so much more from my interactions with other readers and writers, but I can still see my journal writing as necessary.
We all look at things differently. Thanks for your thoughts here. It certainly adds to the dialogue!
Nov 6, 2023·edited Nov 6, 2023Liked by Ramona Grigg
I think journal writing also tends to be less organized. This is based on reading students journals when I taught CW and on my own journals. I had to mine the material from my earliest voice lesson journals to have a coherent, detailed narrative in the essay linked below.
When I first started on Substack, I knew I wanted to write, but it had been awhile since I had written for public consumption, and in particular something that wasn't corporate in nature. So, given my daily expression was journal writing, I likely go the mix a bit wrong at the beginning. Mostly because I also didn't expect people to find me on here and read what I was writing. I was being shy. But, as I got rolling I realized I loved reading other people's Substack's and started to see and understand the different types of writing that was attracting me as a reader. And, I agree with you, it wasn't the journal type stuff, however, I do love personal essays.
Also, thanks for the tip about keeping the other side of the page blank in your journals and keeping it loose. I tend to fill every nook, cranny and line with writing. I've only just recently given myself permission to be more creative with my 'space' in the journal. This was a great post.
I love personal essays, too, but I want them to tell me a story. Too often the journal stuff has no real beginning and no satisfying ending. It just is.
When I saw that idea about leaving the left side of my journal page blank it was an 'aha!' moment and I'm still grateful for it. I use it often, and it seems to have the ability to free up my writing even more. I know I'll have space to add or explain if I need to. When I was writing on both sides of the page in other journals it made me anxious, since there was no room for error, and I think my writing showed that.
Nov 6, 2023·edited Nov 6, 2023Liked by Ramona Grigg
Overall, I agree, but it can get blurry. I've been journaling for a decade or more, but consistently, daily, only for a couple of years. One blurry area is that some of my early posts grew out of journal entries. Another is that, channeling Joan Didion, I write to find out what I'm thinking. That used to be in my journal. Then I started writing out mini personal essays in other writers' comments sections (sorry, not sorry, Amanda Hinton!) and slowly started putting that more personal stuff into my posts. That's absorbing all my "journal energy" at the moment. I appreciate the nudge to put things back where they belong!
Another journal perk! I've built many a blog post out of a journal entry. It gets my juices going, but that's not to say there isn't a whole lot of editing and any number of drafts before it's ready for publication.
My warning here is simply 'don't publish raw journal entries'. Turn them into something worth reading and they'll have given back two-fold.
I should say I wrote this essay based on something I read on social media that struck a nerve. It read like a journal entry and not a polished piece ready for prime time. It fell flat for me.
It's not the first time I've seen something like that, so I thought I'd throw it out here for discussion.
Yes, there it is. I know I harp on this often but this is called 'Writer Everlasting', after all. If we're in it for the long haul, we need to respect our readers. Polish that published work!
Yes to you both! So many kernels of ideas, half-formed in early morning darkness, have developed from my journal pages to a story, newsletter post, essay or poem. I often will highlight or put a big asterisk on the page to come back to when I “mine” the pages once I fill a journal. Do these highlighted pages always turn into gold? Ummm, no...
Nov 6, 2023·edited Nov 6, 2023Liked by Ramona Grigg
I stopped keeping a regular journal some years ago, partly because of hand surgery but also because after several decades I felt it took too much time way from my writing and I found therapy more useful. :-)
However, I have religiously kept a voice journal: comments, notes, questions, quotes from every voice lesson I've taken since 2015 with a huge gap during the pandemic. Since I record the lessons, it helps me to have some written commentary/analysis as well. And I'm hoping to write a full memoir based on the journals.
Even a short entry records how I felt in the lesson, anything critical I was taught, and then sometimes points out a place in the recorded lesson I need to go back to, either because I need work on something or I need to enjoy a breakthrough or whatever.
I love your story about finding your voice. What a find in your voice teacher, Natalie! And lucky you for finding something that can still thrill and challenge you.
I was going to become a singer myself, until I mysteriously lost the ability to sing. My range was the same as Barbra Streisand's and I sang her songs, though I started out as a soprano and took voice lessons throughout my teen years, thinking I might sing opera some day.
I've never had much luck talking my thoughts into a microphone. Words on paper work best for me, and when I'm finished I have a permanent record. I've been cursed with a short memory. I guess I just need to see it in writing.
Nov 6, 2023·edited Nov 6, 2023Liked by Ramona Grigg
Thanks for your comments! Me, too with thoughts on paper. I know plenty of people do recorded journals but that's never worked for me--I need to *see* it.
That's quite a range you have! Me, I'm a bass-baritone or a "baritone with bass vibes" as my new teacher says with a grin. My range is two octaves but I'm happier lower.
The Community Music School at MSU is affordable and only five minutes from my home. I've had a handful of different teachers and may do an essay on how different they all were, and what united them all. My newest one is so positive and encouraging that I feel lifted up after each lesson. He's a born teacher.
PS--Vanity Fair last month devoted a lot to Streisand. Long chunk of her memoir about the making of The Way We Were and also an interview/feature.
Thanks, I'll look for it. I just watched a Streisand biography on Netflix, I think.
I wrote a column about her some time in the 1980s--about how she was able to build such supreme confidence, overcoming her homeliness and making herself into a beautiful bird with a voice that even now defies description.
She was my role model in so many ways, except for the bitchiness. 😏
I've written a personal journal for about 20 years - the ideas may have come Natalie, I don't remember. But that is very different than the articles I write - which as you say are polished and edited. An idea in the journal may become an article, but they are two different entities for me.
LOL. If I ever did become a famous person you can bet those journal entries would go through an extensive editing process before they ever saw the light of day!
I don't enjoy reading posts that are simply a (boring) reflection of every day, day in and day out, so I would agree with this. As you said in the comments personal essay is great if it tells a story and a journal entry can be an excellent starting point for something more robust.
I'm on the side of "boring." I agree that someone else's journal thoughts are mostly not for me. I want to be taken on a journey when I read a piece of writing. It doesn't mean it has to be a traveling journey but it does have to be a quality journey.
This is so good, mostly because it's a reminder that while our blog/newsletter/etc. doesn't have to be perfect, it still should be well thought out and revised. It is not a brain dump for our ideas or reflections or rants. Yes, it is a writing workshop, of sorts, because we are learning and evolving as writers, but we should also have a private space where we can just put the ideas before we subject them to the world. Thank you for the reminder, Ramona!
I think some writers don't yet see their blogs as showcases for their best work, and that's a shame. They see then as convenient landfills for whatever it is they want to throw out there. It doesn't have to be good. It just has to fill the page.
It's partly the fault of the publishing world, since they haven't yet acknowledged blogs or newsletters as legitimate publications. And that's not going to change until they have a reason to acknowledge and respect those choices. Those of us who take our blogs and newsletters seriously might need to work a little harder at building up some respectability for these self-publishing efforts. I'm not suggesting policing them, but rather emphasizing the push for good writing, no matter which direction a blog/newsletter takes.
The rapid growth of Substack tells me there is a place for quality self-published writing, but the emphasis has to be on 'quality' or the platform will never shine enough to make an impact. I don't know how to do that, other than to publish these reminders now and then.
I'm especially glad to see I'm far from the only one working at it! 💕
Good writers should get paid for their work, but too many people think that writing is just making a decision to write, doing it, and then getting paid for that writing, even if it's crap. Even writers who write really good stuff early in their careers grow and develop into better writers the longer they work at their craft. Yes, keep writing. Yes, keep publishing. But we need to encourage READERS to be better gatekeepers, rewarding those who are doing good and meaningful work.
Good writers should be paid for their work. I couldn't agree more. But when venues like Substack become more and more appealing to anyone who wants a free and easy outlet, the likelihood of that happening dwindles That's a fact.
While Substack was set up to help writers get paid, it works against that by opening their doors to anyone who wants to publish here. They promote the lucky few who guarantee big bucks and the rest of us are on our own, knowing as the crowds grow we're less and less likely to be seen.
We can't force readers to pay us. Not unless all of Substack becomes a paying website. I admit I think sometimes I'm doing no favors by insisting my blog will always be optional-payments. It creates a mindset for readers who then go looking for the free blogs and will only pay for those that are truly exceptional or have something more to offer than just the writing. At the same time, it's impossible for most of us to pay for every blog we like and appreciate. There are simply too many.
But this is for another day. It's clear, though, that it's always on our minds.
When it comes to monetization, I'm learning things now from other Substackers that I wish I had learned years ago. For example, I should have set up a "Buy me a coffee" account with my old blog when I started taking it more seriously. I'm setting up my Bookshop.org affiliate membership so I can promote books in a way that doesn't promote Amazon. I'm keeping MOST things free, but I'm learning to be really intentional about making pieces only available for paid subscribers one to two times a month (but not my regular Friday posts).
The world is changing and I'm feeling like we can be a part of that change. But you're right, none of us can pay for EVERYONE. I don't pay for subscriptions here yet because the people from whom I would benefit most, I don't have time to do their workshops or read all of their writing! Sigh! It's a hard balance.
I get it. I wish I had something more to offer outside of my usual blogs, but right now I don't. I just don't have the energy for it. So I can't expect my readers to pay, though I sure as hell would like it!
Out of 876 subscribers only 15 are paid. While I appreciate each and every one of them, that's some pretty bad numbers. I don't know what to do about it, so I do nothing except try to write something readers will be interested in, and hope for the best.
Please know that, although I'm not one of the paid ones, I appreciate everything you bring to this community and I'll share your work as much as I can 😊
Drat1 That’s precisely what I’ve done. A heavily curated journal, but a journal none the less. Blogging has since moved to Facebook, but now that I’m taking Substack seriously...I have much to consider.
If you feel you need an editor there probably are some out there who would be willing to help. It looks fine to me.
One thing I'd like to suggest: You might want to personalize your 'About' page as soon as you can. It's the first place many potential subscribers will go in order to see what you're about before they commit.
If you don't know what you want there you can take a look at the About pages of other Substack writers (including mine) to see what they emphasize.
Some bloggers do indeed use their platform as a journal, but like you said, it's essential to strike a balance between personal reflection and providing valuable content to readers. But ultimately, it's up to each writer to find their own approach that best suits their goals and preferences. Journaling and blogging can coexist, and the key is understanding when and how to use each to benefit your creative process and connect with your readers.
Oops
Ha ha. There's always the exception. ❤️
Jo, you are definitely an exception.
It’s a good thing I don’t include all my weigh-ins and measurements...
😂
I enjoyed this Ramona, even if to some extent I disagree. Or I agree that you should but your best work up front, polished to perfection.
But at the same time, I'm interested with the idea of writing with the door open, or keeping an open workshop/laboratory (to use different metaphors).I've seen a few people do things like this here.
And I've set up a "First Draft" section to my stack for my word salads. It's mostly there to keep me accountable (if I know someone might be reading, I'm more likely to be writing and writing more cogent things). But at the same time I don't expect anyone to be interested and although I hit publish I don't punish anyone by sending it to anyone's inboxes!
It's just an experiment, but I'm curious about experimenting with blurring those lines in writing.
There's nothing wrong with free-form writing. It can be quite interesting--almost like poetry. But it's not the stuff of journals. The writing we do in our journals is rife with self-indulgence--as it should be. They're our own private sessions meant only for our eyes. If they're anything other than that they're not doing the job.
I go to my journal when something is bothering me, or when I'm especially proud of something I've done but I don't feel the need to brag about it elsewhere. My journal is my confessional. I can be me in my journal and nobody will be judging or laughing at me.
I couldn't do that in my blog, nor would I want to.
Maybe I missed the point here, but I think we do ourselves a favor if we stick to journaling privately, without a thought that anyone will ever read it. It's possibly the only place we can really be ourselves.
I definitely see how that may often be the case, but I don't think it is a hard rule.
I'm spent a lifetime journalling, and maybe I'm doing it wrong but I don't always know myself better through my private writing. Perhaps because it is self-indulgent and private, I find my ideas become muddy and opaque. Writing to someone, like this now, is much more clarifying, much for fulfilling.
So even if the other person doesn't read it, the act of journalling to someone or in public, seems to help me understand my thoughts and my writing better.
Just thoughts!
There are no hard rules. Not here, anyway. My original premise is that journal writing is too personal and often too boring to convert it into a blog. That's all.
I agree I get so much more from my interactions with other readers and writers, but I can still see my journal writing as necessary.
We all look at things differently. Thanks for your thoughts here. It certainly adds to the dialogue!
No problem!
I think journal writing also tends to be less organized. This is based on reading students journals when I taught CW and on my own journals. I had to mine the material from my earliest voice lesson journals to have a coherent, detailed narrative in the essay linked below.
Natalie Goldberg! Many of my favorite writing practices come from her.
When I first started on Substack, I knew I wanted to write, but it had been awhile since I had written for public consumption, and in particular something that wasn't corporate in nature. So, given my daily expression was journal writing, I likely go the mix a bit wrong at the beginning. Mostly because I also didn't expect people to find me on here and read what I was writing. I was being shy. But, as I got rolling I realized I loved reading other people's Substack's and started to see and understand the different types of writing that was attracting me as a reader. And, I agree with you, it wasn't the journal type stuff, however, I do love personal essays.
Also, thanks for the tip about keeping the other side of the page blank in your journals and keeping it loose. I tend to fill every nook, cranny and line with writing. I've only just recently given myself permission to be more creative with my 'space' in the journal. This was a great post.
I love personal essays, too, but I want them to tell me a story. Too often the journal stuff has no real beginning and no satisfying ending. It just is.
When I saw that idea about leaving the left side of my journal page blank it was an 'aha!' moment and I'm still grateful for it. I use it often, and it seems to have the ability to free up my writing even more. I know I'll have space to add or explain if I need to. When I was writing on both sides of the page in other journals it made me anxious, since there was no room for error, and I think my writing showed that.
It's called structure and too many writers think structure cuts off their creativity when it reality what it really does is channel it.
Yup.
I hadn't thought to leave a blank page. This is genius!
Overall, I agree, but it can get blurry. I've been journaling for a decade or more, but consistently, daily, only for a couple of years. One blurry area is that some of my early posts grew out of journal entries. Another is that, channeling Joan Didion, I write to find out what I'm thinking. That used to be in my journal. Then I started writing out mini personal essays in other writers' comments sections (sorry, not sorry, Amanda Hinton!) and slowly started putting that more personal stuff into my posts. That's absorbing all my "journal energy" at the moment. I appreciate the nudge to put things back where they belong!
Another journal perk! I've built many a blog post out of a journal entry. It gets my juices going, but that's not to say there isn't a whole lot of editing and any number of drafts before it's ready for publication.
My warning here is simply 'don't publish raw journal entries'. Turn them into something worth reading and they'll have given back two-fold.
I should say I wrote this essay based on something I read on social media that struck a nerve. It read like a journal entry and not a polished piece ready for prime time. It fell flat for me.
It's not the first time I've seen something like that, so I thought I'd throw it out here for discussion.
So thanks for joining in!
And me, I got a whole big fat essay published--with the groundwork laid for a book-length memoir (some day).
I think of substacks as blogs and expect them--wrongly or rightly--to have polish of some kind.
Yes, there it is. I know I harp on this often but this is called 'Writer Everlasting', after all. If we're in it for the long haul, we need to respect our readers. Polish that published work!
I don't enjoy reading blogs or substacks that wander too much and don't have some kind of structure--doesn't matter if they're short or long.
Nope. Just tell me a story. Beginning, middle, ending. I want to have gone somewhere if I'm going to spend the time.
Amen.
Yes to you both! So many kernels of ideas, half-formed in early morning darkness, have developed from my journal pages to a story, newsletter post, essay or poem. I often will highlight or put a big asterisk on the page to come back to when I “mine” the pages once I fill a journal. Do these highlighted pages always turn into gold? Ummm, no...
Love your asterisk. I use a big star!
I stopped keeping a regular journal some years ago, partly because of hand surgery but also because after several decades I felt it took too much time way from my writing and I found therapy more useful. :-)
However, I have religiously kept a voice journal: comments, notes, questions, quotes from every voice lesson I've taken since 2015 with a huge gap during the pandemic. Since I record the lessons, it helps me to have some written commentary/analysis as well. And I'm hoping to write a full memoir based on the journals.
Even a short entry records how I felt in the lesson, anything critical I was taught, and then sometimes points out a place in the recorded lesson I need to go back to, either because I need work on something or I need to enjoy a breakthrough or whatever.
Chapter One has been published: "Finding My Voice at Sixty" https://www.levraphael.com/healthyaging-levraphael.pdf
I love your story about finding your voice. What a find in your voice teacher, Natalie! And lucky you for finding something that can still thrill and challenge you.
I was going to become a singer myself, until I mysteriously lost the ability to sing. My range was the same as Barbra Streisand's and I sang her songs, though I started out as a soprano and took voice lessons throughout my teen years, thinking I might sing opera some day.
I've never had much luck talking my thoughts into a microphone. Words on paper work best for me, and when I'm finished I have a permanent record. I've been cursed with a short memory. I guess I just need to see it in writing.
Thanks for your thoughts, lev.
Thanks for your comments! Me, too with thoughts on paper. I know plenty of people do recorded journals but that's never worked for me--I need to *see* it.
That's quite a range you have! Me, I'm a bass-baritone or a "baritone with bass vibes" as my new teacher says with a grin. My range is two octaves but I'm happier lower.
The Community Music School at MSU is affordable and only five minutes from my home. I've had a handful of different teachers and may do an essay on how different they all were, and what united them all. My newest one is so positive and encouraging that I feel lifted up after each lesson. He's a born teacher.
PS--Vanity Fair last month devoted a lot to Streisand. Long chunk of her memoir about the making of The Way We Were and also an interview/feature.
Thanks, I'll look for it. I just watched a Streisand biography on Netflix, I think.
I wrote a column about her some time in the 1980s--about how she was able to build such supreme confidence, overcoming her homeliness and making herself into a beautiful bird with a voice that even now defies description.
She was my role model in so many ways, except for the bitchiness. 😏
I heard Dionne Warwick in a concert with Manhattan Transfer as the opening act and DW had some nasty things to say about Daina Ross.
Sometimes it's best not to say those things out loud. 🙄
LOL. It was a weird moment for sure.
I've written a personal journal for about 20 years - the ideas may have come Natalie, I don't remember. But that is very different than the articles I write - which as you say are polished and edited. An idea in the journal may become an article, but they are two different entities for me.
That's been my experience: the journals are the raw material. The article or essay is the polished product.
Exactly. I hope that's what we're getting across here.
Great thoughts here Ramona. I agree. Except, if you ARE a famous person, go ahead and write those journal type posts. I’ll read every bit of it. 😂
LOL. If I ever did become a famous person you can bet those journal entries would go through an extensive editing process before they ever saw the light of day!
I don't enjoy reading posts that are simply a (boring) reflection of every day, day in and day out, so I would agree with this. As you said in the comments personal essay is great if it tells a story and a journal entry can be an excellent starting point for something more robust.
Exactly! Thanks.
I'm on the side of "boring." I agree that someone else's journal thoughts are mostly not for me. I want to be taken on a journey when I read a piece of writing. It doesn't mean it has to be a traveling journey but it does have to be a quality journey.
Like Natalie Goldberg, I too like cheap spiral bound notebooks. They are lighter to carry around than a fancy hardback note book.
This is so good, mostly because it's a reminder that while our blog/newsletter/etc. doesn't have to be perfect, it still should be well thought out and revised. It is not a brain dump for our ideas or reflections or rants. Yes, it is a writing workshop, of sorts, because we are learning and evolving as writers, but we should also have a private space where we can just put the ideas before we subject them to the world. Thank you for the reminder, Ramona!
I think some writers don't yet see their blogs as showcases for their best work, and that's a shame. They see then as convenient landfills for whatever it is they want to throw out there. It doesn't have to be good. It just has to fill the page.
It's partly the fault of the publishing world, since they haven't yet acknowledged blogs or newsletters as legitimate publications. And that's not going to change until they have a reason to acknowledge and respect those choices. Those of us who take our blogs and newsletters seriously might need to work a little harder at building up some respectability for these self-publishing efforts. I'm not suggesting policing them, but rather emphasizing the push for good writing, no matter which direction a blog/newsletter takes.
The rapid growth of Substack tells me there is a place for quality self-published writing, but the emphasis has to be on 'quality' or the platform will never shine enough to make an impact. I don't know how to do that, other than to publish these reminders now and then.
I'm especially glad to see I'm far from the only one working at it! 💕
Good writers should get paid for their work, but too many people think that writing is just making a decision to write, doing it, and then getting paid for that writing, even if it's crap. Even writers who write really good stuff early in their careers grow and develop into better writers the longer they work at their craft. Yes, keep writing. Yes, keep publishing. But we need to encourage READERS to be better gatekeepers, rewarding those who are doing good and meaningful work.
Good writers should be paid for their work. I couldn't agree more. But when venues like Substack become more and more appealing to anyone who wants a free and easy outlet, the likelihood of that happening dwindles That's a fact.
While Substack was set up to help writers get paid, it works against that by opening their doors to anyone who wants to publish here. They promote the lucky few who guarantee big bucks and the rest of us are on our own, knowing as the crowds grow we're less and less likely to be seen.
We can't force readers to pay us. Not unless all of Substack becomes a paying website. I admit I think sometimes I'm doing no favors by insisting my blog will always be optional-payments. It creates a mindset for readers who then go looking for the free blogs and will only pay for those that are truly exceptional or have something more to offer than just the writing. At the same time, it's impossible for most of us to pay for every blog we like and appreciate. There are simply too many.
But this is for another day. It's clear, though, that it's always on our minds.
When it comes to monetization, I'm learning things now from other Substackers that I wish I had learned years ago. For example, I should have set up a "Buy me a coffee" account with my old blog when I started taking it more seriously. I'm setting up my Bookshop.org affiliate membership so I can promote books in a way that doesn't promote Amazon. I'm keeping MOST things free, but I'm learning to be really intentional about making pieces only available for paid subscribers one to two times a month (but not my regular Friday posts).
The world is changing and I'm feeling like we can be a part of that change. But you're right, none of us can pay for EVERYONE. I don't pay for subscriptions here yet because the people from whom I would benefit most, I don't have time to do their workshops or read all of their writing! Sigh! It's a hard balance.
I get it. I wish I had something more to offer outside of my usual blogs, but right now I don't. I just don't have the energy for it. So I can't expect my readers to pay, though I sure as hell would like it!
Out of 876 subscribers only 15 are paid. While I appreciate each and every one of them, that's some pretty bad numbers. I don't know what to do about it, so I do nothing except try to write something readers will be interested in, and hope for the best.
Please know that, although I'm not one of the paid ones, I appreciate everything you bring to this community and I'll share your work as much as I can 😊
Drat1 That’s precisely what I’ve done. A heavily curated journal, but a journal none the less. Blogging has since moved to Facebook, but now that I’m taking Substack seriously...I have much to consider.
Hi Tripp. Welcome! I took a look at your Substack and I don't see journal entries, I see well thought out essays. I think you're doing just fine!
Thanks so much! I really need a good editor to help me with some structure.
If you feel you need an editor there probably are some out there who would be willing to help. It looks fine to me.
One thing I'd like to suggest: You might want to personalize your 'About' page as soon as you can. It's the first place many potential subscribers will go in order to see what you're about before they commit.
If you don't know what you want there you can take a look at the About pages of other Substack writers (including mine) to see what they emphasize.
Good luck!
I've never kept a journal, but if I did, I'm sure I'd use it as the raw material that Ramona suggests.
Some bloggers do indeed use their platform as a journal, but like you said, it's essential to strike a balance between personal reflection and providing valuable content to readers. But ultimately, it's up to each writer to find their own approach that best suits their goals and preferences. Journaling and blogging can coexist, and the key is understanding when and how to use each to benefit your creative process and connect with your readers.
Man, I appreciate writers who don't want to waste my time!