You're Doing It All Wrong!

There's a reason why some of us need rules on Substack. But, that doesn't make it right. And it certainly doesn't mean we all have to follow them.

I read a headline the other day that was something like ‘you’re taking a shower all wrong’. I rolled my eyes. It was a ridiculous clickbait article, one of many I’ve seen over the years, with a headline that’s designed to prey on people’s insecurities.

The recent furore with Glennon Doyle here on Substack, specifically within Substack Notes, where one of the biggest complaints was that she arrived on Substack the wrong way, reminded me of this headline.

For those who are blissfully unaware, the writer of Untamed arrived on Substack earlier this week. I understand that people had an issue with her arrival because it was perceived to be ‘too loud’ and done in a ‘corporatey/PR’ kind of way; maybe it was encouraged by her advisers, and therefore, people didn’t feel it was authentic. Additionally, she switched on paid subscribers immediately and had over 200,000 subscribers, which she’d brought with her. She hadn’t, therefore, struggled, like the rest of us, to grow her following on Substack specifically.

There were many writers here on Substack, and I have to say the vast majority of them were women, who believed that she was doing Substack the wrong way.

You’re doing Substack all wrong.

Glennon uploaded a video of herself (in her car, I think?) announcing her arrival and then Elizabeth Gilbert interviewed her. She received the red carpet treatment (after all, neither you nor I would be interviewed by Gilbert on our arrival) as her introduction to the platform. She then went on to publish ‘too much content, too quickly’, according to some of the comments I saw.

People weren’t happy. An open letter was written on Notes, tagging Doyle in it. The letter was written with love and admiration, and the writer said she was a big fan of Doyle's. However, she felt uncomfortable with Doyle’s arrival. Certain emotions had been activated within her, and she felt “a sadness [she] couldn’t immediately name.”

I saw other Notes. One compared Doyle’s arrival to Amazon setting up next to an independent bookshop or Walmart next to a boutique shop. The open letter had so many women agreeing and feeling the same emotions.

It all came to a head when Glennon emailed her subscribers and said, Substack isn’t for me after all, and she left. Was she bullied off, did she throw her toys out of the pram, or did she leave to protect her mental health?

Now, I’m just a casual observer, I’m neither a fan nor a hater of Glennon. I think I have one of her books, Untamed, somewhere, but I may have dreamt that as I can’t find it anywhere. However, the psychology of it all interests me because I think a lot of it involves feelings related to our creative mindset.

Firstly, I will say I do understand the sadness and uncertainty which some writers described when Glennon arrived and their discomfort with her ‘celebrity’ appearance on Substack. I don’t have those feelings myself, but I understand. But I’m also disturbed by the fact that these women are telling another woman that she’s doing something in the wrong way, and that she should be quieter, slower, more authentic and so on. I mean, don’t women get enough of that shit from society at large?

I’m not here to do a pile-on against Glennon and nor am I here to do a pile-on against these women who have allegedly bullied Glennon off the platform. Because, in reality, this article isn’t about Glennon. It’s about our lack of confidence and insecurities around our writing and creativity, and how we must learn to push them to one side and focus on our controllables. When we focus too much on what others do, it destroys a part of us and stops us from producing our art.

When I become obsessed with how successful other people are or even how my friends appear to be living their lives so much better than me, I eventually realise I’m bothered by it because I am not focusing on myself, my dreams, and my writing. Once I put my head down and started focusing on my nonfiction book proposal and my Substack essays, those feelings disappeared. I became immersed in my creative future than worrying about what other people were doing. And you know what, once I concentrated on what I was doing, my anxiety decreased and my mental health improved.

I’ve been reading Notes and essays about all of the Glennon Doyle drama, and there are several issues I’d like to address that may be affecting our mindset:

1. From a broader perspective, this frustration with celebrities and big-name writers joining Substack has probably stemmed from a weariness with social media and online platforms in general. We’re fed up with competing with an algorithm that appears to hate us. We’re fed up with tech that appears to hate art and writing in favour of controversy, AI, or mind-dumbing dross.

2. Additionally, there is this fear of change. I’ve been hearing some mutterings and disquiet about how Substack is changing for some time now, pre-Doyle’s arrival. People don’t like how Substack introduced Notes, video or the ability to go live. They don’t like people writing about Substack (whoops), and certain subjects are a big no-no. I’ve written more about it in my article called Creators, Do You Fear Offending People or Worrying About Showing Up Less Than Perfect? I understand where this is coming from. Instagram used to be a place for artists, writers and creatives. Then it was bought by Meta, which many of us feared as we thought it would go the same way as Facebook, and our fears were then realised. An algorithm was brought in. Videos became more of a thing. They tried to replicate TikTok. Everything changed. And Twitter used to be a place for writers, and then it began to get too loud and too political and too mean, and it just wasn’t a nice place to be. Even blogging, to a certain extent, used to be a lovely place where you could develop communities. And then people started monetising, taking on sponsorships and advertising. So it all changed there, too. There is this worry that Substack is going to change or is changing because it’s bringing in video, reels, podcasts, live events and so on. They’re trying different approaches to attract more users to the platform. Writers already on Substack are understandably worried because they don’t want it to go the same way as other platforms. But when people complain about these things, when they make up rules suggesting this platform isn’t the place to do certain things, then this drips into people’s consciousness. I’ve not uploaded a video on Notes for a few weeks because I’m afraid of offending someone who hates to see them. Normally, I don’t give a stuff and do what I want, but this drip, drip, drip has, unfortunately, got to me.

3. There are also mindset issues, such as writers and their insecurities, their self-doubt, lack of confidence and all that other mindset stuff that I write about at length. These mindset issues are written about negatively and it feeds into a collective consciousness.

   Josie George
   has written an insightful Note saying, “There’s a big energy on Notes lately of people publicly worrying about their success or lack of it, worrying about other people competing with them or stealing attention, worrying about being drowned out or forgotten, and it is infectious.” If one person writes about their anxieties about a big-name writer joining the platform, then another and another, it can drip-feed into your anxieties. When I read about Glennon arriving, I questioned whether I was bothered, because I felt I ought to be. Notes suggested I should be. But, in reality, I was unperturbed.

4. There’s this idea that there’s a limited pie from which we can all eat. The scarcity mindset. By that, I mean writers believe that there is a limit to how many subscribers and paid subscribers there are, and we’re all fighting for the same readers, the same money and the same attention. (Incidentally, I don’t believe this is true.) Therefore, we see each other as competitors.

   Hamish McKenzie
   wrote a Note a few days ago saying, “A well-known writer arriving on Substack does not take away anything from you. You do not get to have an audience by default. Rather, when a big writer arrives and brings their audience with them, that’s a whole new population of people who might discover your voice and fall in love with your work.”

5. Comparison, as we all know, is the thief of all joy. There was a lot of comparison when Glennon arrived. And envy. Which is understandable. Who wouldn’t want 200,000 subscribers? If 5% of them were paid, that would be *checks calculator*…oh my word, that’s 10,000 people paying you £5 a month. (Is that really £50,000?! A month? Wouldn’t that be nice!) We are all, after all, humans with flaws.

   Lucy Werner
   wrote here that “What other people do here is not my business.” And this is true. Don’t compare. Stay in your lane, focus on your writing, your creativity, and keep your eyes on the direction you want to take. Anything else is where insanity lies. Believe me, I’ve been there.

6. When Glennon arrived, we immediately could see she had over 200,000 subscribers. But, as Hamish said, these subscribers came with her, from a list that has probably taken her years to build. We also need to remember that Glennon didn’t come into this world as a famous writer. She started at the beginning, too. Just like me and you. It just wasn’t on this platform.

   Meagan Francis
   has several Notes that just make sense on her Notes feed, and in this one she says that Glennon, “started off in the aughts as a little ol blogger, just like a lot of us. She authors books. She was a writer before she was any of those other things.” (By other things she is referring to the podcasting, vlogging, speaking, celebrity aspects).

7. To create a platform like Substack, you need a lot of money. You need to pay creative people, techy people, you need to pay the entrepreneurs who had the initial idea. Then you need to pay all the other people who come with running a business. My 100-plus something paid subscribers are massive for me, but for Substack, which takes a slice of each of these paid subscribers’ subscription fees, it’s not enough to run a company and pay their employees a decent wage. Attracting writers like Glennon Doyle and Elizabeth Gilbert will mean that the company has more money to either invest in the platform to pay their employees or whatever else they do behind-the-scenes. These things do not run on wishful thinking and words alone, however much we wish it. Most importantly, having these big-name writers means we do not need adverts here on the platform. And I think we can all be grateful for that.

Now, I’m sure I’ve missed a few issues and probably a few brilliant quotes from others more insightful than me, but this is a flavour of the thoughts I’ve had over the last few days.

What can we do about it?

To start with, I would say if you have these painful and overwhelming feelings of envy, insecurity or whatever, when a big name comes to the platform and hits the ground running and seems to be doing brilliantly, don’t give yourself a hard time for having them. We give ourselves a massively hard time over our creativity, our procrastination, our failures and so on anyway, we don’t need to add to the pile-on. We are human with human emotions, we are multi-layered. We are complicated. We creatives are a sensitive bunch. We are allowed to feel as we feel.

Many of us on here see Substack as a safe haven in an online world full of noise, misogyny and trolling. And when another writer comes along, who is perceived as loud in their entrance, a bit clumsy and inauthentic, it can feel like an attack. It can feel like our safe haven is about to be invaded.

But maybe, just maybe, criticising/attacking a fellow writer when they join a platform is not the right way to go about it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not telling you how to act at all. That’s why this controversy happened in the first place. And we should feel free to criticise. We do have freedom of speech. In the open letter I mentioned at the beginning, I could empathise with some of the issues the author raised. But in some circumstances, telling another writer what they can and cannot do can come across as gatekeeping, bullying and dictating how another woman behaves. Yet, these writers were honestly processing their feelings. They felt something had changed. They were concerned. And yes, the feelings were quite possibly because deeper issues were going on with them and their mindset. Maybe a little bit of understanding for that would help.

But most importantly, if you’re feeling sad, or angry, or envious, or insecure when a big-name writer joins the Substack platform, think about your creative energy. Your creative mindset. Your mental health. Would you be better off channelling that negative energy into your own art?

There should be no rules when it comes to writing. If another writer writes something you don’t like or acts in a way you disagree with, then simply muting and moving on is probably for the best. It will certainly save you a lot of energy that could be best spent on your writing. We don’t get to dictate how another person writes or does things on any platform. Jeez, there’s enough of that on Twitter.

That brings me back to what I said above. We cannot control the world. Believe me when I say that during the Covid pandemic, I tried. We can only control our actions. When I tried to control the actions of others during the pandemic, I made myself mentally ill in the process. It nearly destroyed me. And a wise person said to me, focus on your controllables. What can you do in this moment? Do you want to doomscroll on X/Twitter and make yourself angry and ill with worry? Or, perhaps write in your journal about your feelings? Maybe turn that energy into something positive and write a story or an essay? Or, take up running or rowing? Walk the dogs. Ring a friend.

Growing on Substack takes a long time for most of us. Those of us who come along and seem to grow quickly may already be bringing a list of people with them, which means they collected engaged subscribers on a different platform. Which would have also taken them some time. An overnight success is rarely that. If we want to grow quicker, how can we best do that? Work on a strategy, take yourself seriously as a writer, and put yourself out there a bit more. I used to get so frustrated many years ago when I wasn’t growing on other platforms. But, guess what? I was deliberately keeping myself small because I didn’t want to be seen. Yet, I also wanted to be read. But the thought of someone reading my words filled me with horror. It was a conflicting time, and my emotions were exhausting.

I got through this by journaling. By writing down how I was feeling and examining those feelings. I discovered I was fearing success and failure, I gave myself a hard time for procrastinating when I was fearful, thus depleting my confidence further, and that I had no self-belief, or felt worthy of being a writer. And then I worked on all of that. I’m not perfect, or cured now, but I am more aware that when I feel something, it usually means something else is going on in my head.

It has taken me three or four years to get to just over 3000 subscribers and just over 140 paid subscribers. Substack is not a ‘get subscribers quick scheme’, especially if you are starting here without any other sort of platform. That sounds harsh, but it is true. You have to start from zero, and it takes time, a lot of words and a lot of putting yourself out there, to grow.

And we don’t grow authentically by making rules for others to follow or by tearing others down.