To ghost or not to ghost
What it really takes to keep a creative project alive
As I write this letter on the morning of my weekly deadline, I’m thinking of Delia Cai’s recent piece in Vanity Fair about all the newsletters that haven’t kept up. The ones that didn’t find their audience or the ones that couldn’t compete with childcare or paid work or other Maslowian needs. When that happens, writers must weigh the decision of whether to ghost their audience or make a dramatic going out of business post. It gets more complicated with paying subscribers who may or may not be owed a refund on an annual subscription.
Cai herself had to make that decision. Previously the compiler of “one link every morning to something cool/gossip-worthy/all of the above happening in the media industry,” she was recruited by Vanity Fair to cover what they call Vanities (celebrity, style, culture, etc.), and announced to her followers that Deez Links would be taking a hiatus as she settled in.
Her piece was also inspired by Charlie Warzel’s announcement that he’d been lured by The Atlantic’s new newsletter initiative after previously leaving The New York Times to strike out on Substack. He didn’t provide exact details of what he made on Substack, but he left enough crumbs and sentiment to let us know why the thought of having slightly less independence at a big publication would be enticing.
This letter isn’t really about the economics of a newsletter or the future of journalism, though. I use Substack because I have to put these words down somewhere and the combination of web hosting and email service is perfect for my sharing needs. As you may know, I don’t get paid for this; the value is seeing people I know and care about open my emails and contend with my thoughts.
For all the people trying to make this work, and it can if you really care about your niche and find an audience that feels the same way, I hope you succeed (Anne Helen Petersen, Isaac Fitzgerald, and Heather Cox Richardson are just a few good examples of this). It’s not perfect, but I’m rooting for this model to be one option that keeps good writing alive in places it otherwise wouldn’t make it.
But whether this is a moneymaker or a passion project, it’s not really about the audience. They’ll come and go. They’ll bitch and they’ll moan. But you have to sit down every week and put something down that you can live with. And if you’re doing that for anyone but yourself, you’ll find excuses to give it up. You’ll lose patience with it. You’ll take the road that gives you less grief.
Because this isn’t one of those “find what you love and you’ll never work a day” platitudes. This is hard work. It can be lonely work. And it’s on top of my work work. But when that one sentence or word makes a whole piece click in to place, boy is it worth it.
It’s as simple and as hard as giving yourself your word and keeping it. What’s worth that promise for you?