I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Monday Marketing, I research, plan, and evaluate my marketing and promotion activities.
I enjoyed art biz coach Alyson Stanfield’s recent podcast episode It’s Not Your Job to Worry About Adding to the Noise. In it, she says:
You’re not here to add to the noise.
You’re here to resonate. To be a beacon.
She encourages artists and others to post even if you’re worried about adding to online noise, even if you think everyone’s already saying what you’re going to say, even if you said it before, even if you think there’s so much out there better than what you’re going to post.
This is exactly what I need to hear, as I post here, there, and everywhere about my new art-and-essay project about midlife romance and reinvention. I fear flooding the world with boring, rehashed, or just plain dumb content whether that’s my serialized memoir essays, my articles about artificial intelligence, or my cultural commentary on my main newsletter Greensborough Drive.
Just why do I have so many Substack newsletters anyway? Stanfield gives a clue. She says:
You don’t find your voice by thinking about it for two years.
You find it by using it. In your studio and when you take the work out of the studio and share it with others—in real life or online.
That doesn’t mean you post every day just for the sake of consistency. It means you show up for the process. You improve quality over time—through practice, through repetition, through doing the work again and again. Just like you do in the studio.
Well, I do post every day but not for the sake of consistency. I do it because posting here every day (1) allows me to process whatever’s going on in my art and non-art life every morning (2) logs what I’m going through in reinventing myself as an artist and writer and (3) provides fodder for my other writing efforts.
And an important (4), Stanfield suggests, is that “sometimes we’re the ones who need to hear our own message the most.”
I write here to guide myself through the self-consciousness, doubt, and fear I feel as I try to make it as an artist and writer.
Stanfield suggests three shifts in your attitude about sharing online:
- Shift from performance to presence.
You don’t need to impress anyone. Just be here. For yourself, for the work, and for others.- Shift from broadcasting to connecting.
Stop thinking of your posts or emails as megaphones and start thinking of them as conversation starters.- Shift from perfection to permission.
What would you share if you didn’t need it to be amazing—just real?
I really like this. What if it’s good enough bar to reach to simply be present online?
Well, I’m already doing it!
What if my measure of success for a newsletter article or essay is if just one person responds, and I’ve thereby connected with someone?
I almost always see that happen.
And what if I give myself permission to share when something feels real to me, not because I’ve polished it to some perfectionist’s ideal?
That might be new for me. I do try really hard to the point of overworking my writing to make it really good. But I may be losing my voice and energy that way. I’m going to try writing in my newsletters and essays more like I write here.
I don’t stress out here about making things really good. I write from my heart. I say what I want to say in my own words, and then I hit publish. It feels good. I’d like to bring that energy to my newsletters.
I’m gonna go work on a Greensborough Drive article right now!