My 2024 Writing (and Reading) Goals
Step 1: Stop subscribing to so many Substacks
I’m typically pretty anti-New Year’s Resolutions. Mostly because declaring new goals in January feels totally arbitrary to me. If I make a promise to myself that I’m going to do something, I just do it, regardless of the time of year. (For instance, I decided I was going to make this Substack and publish weekly, and I haven’t missed a week yet.)
Despite all those caveats, I think ritual is important, and so is doing something individual like goal-setting as part of a group. Since this is what we do on January 1, and I’ve had these intentions floating around in my head for a while, now seemed like a good time to write them all down and send them out (for accountability, another useful element of New Year’s Resolutions).
These are not SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound) goals. They’re really mostly vibes. But here’s what I’m looking to do with my reading and writing in 2024.
Read fewer Substacks—and more books
I went a little overboard on Substack this year. I love the pieces produced here—cultural criticism, writing tips, community-building—and as someone who used to read social media for the articles, the death of Facebook, Twitter et al. meant that I needed to find somewhere else to find my short-form reading material.
I started this year subscribed to a few publications, and before long my list had ballooned up to…thirty? I’m also the sort of person who reads every email I receive, newsletters included. And this is not sustainable.
I miss books. I miss diving into a topic for a long time and being able to share what I’ve learned or enjoyed with friends and family, instead of binging through a half-dozen articles and having nothing to say about them over the dinner table.
I’m starting to prune my newsletter subscriptions, and I’m getting better at just skimming the emails that aren’t interesting to me. And I have a great reward waiting for me if I and when I succeed—books!
Keep this newsletter going (whether or not it’s on Substack)
Look, Substack has a Nazi problem. If you haven’t heard about this yet, here’s
(who famously knows a thing or two about authoritarian takeovers) on the issue:
I am definitely a Substacker Against Nazis, though I don’t think it’s a particularly good use of space to reprint the open letter myself for my meager subscriber base (all 29 of you). While I’m still waiting to see how things unfold, early signs from Substack’s leadership have not been positive.
My opinion? All the platforms are bad. Facebook and Instagram are bad. Twitter is obviously bad. TikTok is bad and may or may not be mining your data for the Chinese government. Discord, I’ve learned recently, is also bad.
Is Substack bad enough to abandon ship? I’m not sure yet. At this moment in time, I’m keeping this publication free, so I don’t make them any money, and pulling all my paid subscriptions to other Substacks (right now I support artists and writers on Patreon, until I learn about them being bad too).
If the ship does start going down more significantly, I’ll look into alternate places to host my newsletter. But I’m committed to keeping this writing practice going regardless.
Develop a stronger identity for the newsletter
I know that “writing about writing” isn’t the most exciting pitch or the most unique niche. And I don’t love that the entire ethos of
can currently be summed up by this fortune cookie fortune I received last week:
I’m working on refining my voice and what I have to say. And your input as readers matters a lot! Since I think this data is always fun, here are my most successful posts thus far:
What Everyone Is Missing When It Comes to AI Writing has the most total views and the most new subscribers, which makes sense as it was my launch post, and it’s still my gold standard for a good newsletter: a deep dive into a writing-related topic I know very well and you likely don’t!
RE: Natalie's 10 Stupid but True Email Marketing Tricks is a close second for total views, is tied for most likes, and has the highest email open rate, thus proving that I do in fact know what I’m talking about. I’ve also been told this post goes a long way toward explaining the true weirdness that is political fundraising email subject lines these days.
How to Sound Like a Human is tied for most likes, #2 for open rate and #3 for views, and Let’s Get Personal is #2 for new subscribers.
All together, it sounds like you like: deep dives into the marketing industry, clear writing rules, and stuff you can share on LinkedIn. You don’t like: the month of December (which, honestly, valid. It’s my birthday month, but valid).
I don’t want to limit my writing to my most LinkedIn-worthy takes, because believe me, becoming a LinkedIn influencer is nowhere on my list of life goals. What I will do is keep wracking my brain for interesting writing-related tidbits I might know that you don’t (that’s the plan for next week, at least).
In the meantime, if you have something you want me to write about, please let me know!
Finish the first draft of my novel
I’ve had the idea floating around in my head to adapt my most popular play, The Young Ladies of the Class of 1902 of Wesleyan University Present, “As You Like It,” into a novel for years. And I’ve been afraid to do it: afraid that after focusing on theater for so long, I’d have forgotten how to write prose; afraid of not being able to finish; afraid of the total disaster that is the publishing industry if I somehow do finish.
And yet, the idea stuck around in my head, and in May of this year, I started a draft. I haven’t worked on it consistently, but largely thanks to the power of 1,000 Words of Summer, I’ve gotten it up to 90 pages. I’m a little less than halfway through the source material, and if I did that in significantly less than a year, I can finish a first draft in another year, right? Right???
Anyway, I’ll keep you posted. And possibly share some of it on Substack—I haven’t decided if I think that would be valuable for me or entertaining for you yet.
Find writing community
The main reason my chosen writing medium is playwriting is for the community. I need to be around other artists to feel inspired to do my best work. And the artistic relationships I had pre-COVID haven’t survived the years of quarantine, cancelations and institutional reckoning that the theater industry has undergone since.
Searching for writing friends online is part of how I fell down the hole of subscribing to thirty Substacks in the first place (a lot of them are about writing or writing community explicitly). But passively reading content isn’t enough for me to feel like I’m part of a collective, and a Slack group I post in occasionally isn’t fantastic either. Most of the playwriting opportunities I see are ones you need to apply for, there’s always so much interest, and still it somehow doesn’t translate into a structure that lasts.
If any writers out there feel like they’ve cracked the code here, please share what you’ve learned. I’m all ears. In the meantime, I guess I’ll keep trying things and seeing what sticks.
And there you have it: my goals for 2024. Nebulous and messy, just like I expect 2024 to be in general.
At least I have you all now. And I couldn’t be more grateful.