No. 71 - Love thy subscribers

Short, sweet, and salty

Welcome to the latest issue of Feed the Monster, a monthly art journal for the creative and imperfect. Come as you are.

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Me, of late

A snapshot of my thoughts at the moment (if one can take a picture of thoughts):

Oh God oh God oh God here I am yet again at the 11th hour trying to throw a Feed the Monster post together, feeling very rushed and slap-dash and somewhat panicky. When I have an entire goddamned month to do it, for Christ’s sake (I swear a lot in my thoughts). It hasn’t always been like this, but this last year and a half has been hell on a stick with mega-stress, uncertainty and survival panic and WHATEVER I’m not supposed to be beating myself up about my capacity for creative output at the moment or even for that matter expecting myself to have any mental health left AT ALL but when it comes to Feed the Monster I’m holding on for dear life and I feel like someone’s shooting their pistol at my feet yelling DANCE! DANCE! while I madly tap dance, dragging out old posts from years back in the hopes that my subscribers stay with me while I get my shit back together and get back to a place where I can focus on this newsletter and help it become the vital going concern that I so heartily want it to be (sharp intake of breath)—Lots of swearing but not much punctuation in my thoughts.

I’m hoping, dear readers, to be better situated for thinking, feeling, creating, writing, and experiencing the odd joyful moment come the new year, when some of our more vexing life bullshit will be settled somewhat. Maybe not the first day, but hopefully soon after. I SWORE I WASN’T GOING TO TALK ABOUT THIS but I’ve finally been back at work on my Hardcore Journaling Workshop, and I’m feeling pretty good about it. I’m also baking up some plans (half-baked at the moment) about making Feed the Monster more juicy with elements I cannot yet speak of. I see leagues of people running screaming into the street pulling out their own hair in excruciating anticipation.

Don’t you?

I’ve also observed over this roller coaster year and a half how things can change on a dime, so I’m keeping my dial set at “cautiously hopeful” in terms of a timeline for the divine expansion. Easy does it. WHOA NELLY. Et cetera.

Meanwhile. I made a five-minute video of me clomping around the studio, a kind of snapshot of what’s happening/not happening in here. Sort of like the snapshot of my thoughts, above. Only different.

By the way, hello and welcome to all my new subscribers who I am—no word of a lie—extremely grateful for! Thank you for being here! I don’t know who you are, but I hope my tap dancing keeps you here for a while.

I recently read a post by Sarah Fay at Writers at Work where she used Taylor Swift’s social media method of giving more than promoting as a way to approach writing on Substack. I’m not a “Swiftie”—not by a long shot. But I do see how she puts her followers front and centre and has millions of devoted fans as a result. What’s not to like about giving?

Fay’s post suggests that you should love your subscribers, not your subscriber count. Absolutely! It doesn’t mean much if you amass subscribers who don’t actually care about what you’re posting, and quickly unsubscribe. But… I don’t know most of my subscribers. I don’t know *exactly* why they’re here. I have over 500 now, yet only a handful ever “like” a post (click on the little heart, goddammit) or make a comment. Happily, for the most part they stay. I have a high “open rate”, meaning that a high number of people actually open my email when they see it in their inbox. Essentially I’m well situated to establish world domination, but I have yet to achieve the magic formula. Plus I need my life to settle down if I hope to focus on said domination.

Fay’s post also suggests something I’m not sure I agree with: that you should write for your readers, not for yourself. She says “…writers can be so precious about their “creativity.” Writing only for yourself isn’t artistry; it’s ego.” I beg to differ. I’m a little baffled by the quotation marks around the word creativity, and equating writing for yourself with ego. Ego is always present, and needs to be kept in check no matter what you’re doing. Writing for yourself, to my mind, is writing exactly as yourself to the best of your abilities. I don’t see how ego comes into the equation.

Yes, love and appreciate thy subscribers! But to try and write for them would be a fool’s game. A game you can never win. How can you begin to try and please everyone? Presumably your readers have subscribed because they appreciate your voice. Your viewpoint. Your idiosyncratic take on things. Writing the way you write is writing for your readers. So sez I.

And now!

A 15 second video of me trying to get used to being in front of the camera… here’s what was left on the cutting room floor after a session in the studio. It may be that I’m not meant to be in front of the camera, haha. It’s called “Oh hi, it’s me”.

Like Taylor Swift, I want to GIVE.

It’s early, I know. But I won’t be in your inbox again until the new year, so I present to you “Real Xmas”, one of my greeting cards from back in the day when I was messing around with digital collage. I prefer paper, scissors, and glue these days, but I was hot n’ heavy into Photoshop at the time. A hot minute? No.

Whatever you’re celebrating this year, have fun. If you’re trying to avoid the season altogether, Godspeed. I’ll see you on the other side. XOXO

SOME STUFF!

• “Drawing has to come out of your body” - an interview with Lynda Barry

• I’m usually irritated by this kind of thing, but here is Tilda Swinton’s Guide to Life. She had me at “make friends with chaos”.

• Michael Jackson during more innocent times. Singing like an angel.

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Listen to my interview with Sheryl MacKay on CBC’s NxNW here (starts ten minutes in). It’s all about Life’s Work: A Visual Memoir, an art exhibit about my mother’s Lewy Body dementia and my relationship with her

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