Despite your continued idiocy, this is a great piece, Mike! I do appreciate your glass half-full view of several items you covered (e.g., the influx of celebrities to the newsletter game) even though my glass half-empty worldview gives me pause. The beauty of life is we won’t know how it all pans out until it all pans out.
Of interest, my next post will cover three years of lessons learned from writing (and mostly mismanaging) my own newsletter.
Congrats on 30K and here’s to 40K sooner rather than later!
Mike, Mike, Mike...there are no words to describe how I am when I'm here with you. It really is AMAZING. I'm a soggy dishrag, wrung out from all of this wisdom. And it's only 8 AM here. I read through this entire thing and agreed with almost every inch of it, and when I was finished I thought, "I should really pay for this" and I went to become a paid subscriber only to discover I already was one! So yay for me.
I should really do that Zoom thing, but the truth is, as much as you want to come off as this bumpkin who just throws stuff out there, I know better. You know things. You write like a son of a gun.
You quote others who are maybe even more amazing. Like this from Cal Flynn, in an essay I'm going to read as soon as I leave here:
“A quotation, commonly attributed to the writer and pioneering French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, says: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” This, if I ever read one, is a manifesto for nature writing in the present day. This is our own task: to evoke the experience of being in this wild and beautiful world. To stir people to love the planet with a jealous passion, to act in a way more befitting of a custodian or even lover. Go in through the heart, and the head will follow…
We need to be roused. We need to feel. We need a siren song that lures unsuspecting souls to the cause: a song to enchant us, to put us to work.”
Yes, writers, in order to be good, must be intensely curious about everything. Everything has to hit us as interesting, if not fascinating. Every encounter, every scene, every vignette is a story to be told. And we do need to feel. There's not enough of that.
But now I'm going to work on that book I've been promising forever, not because I have a plan, or because you told me to, even though you haven't done it yet, either, but because these thousands of amazing words have energized me.
If I write better after having read this, you're to blame. If I don't, I'm to blame. Either way, here's the obligatory 'thank you'.
This was a genius move to increase engagement. Clearly you are not an idiot, but an evil genius.
Hi Mike! You’re still an idiot.
Despite your continued idiocy, this is a great piece, Mike! I do appreciate your glass half-full view of several items you covered (e.g., the influx of celebrities to the newsletter game) even though my glass half-empty worldview gives me pause. The beauty of life is we won’t know how it all pans out until it all pans out.
Of interest, my next post will cover three years of lessons learned from writing (and mostly mismanaging) my own newsletter.
Congrats on 30K and here’s to 40K sooner rather than later!
HI Mike! You're still an idiot.
But an incredibly talented one!
Mike, Mike, Mike...there are no words to describe how I am when I'm here with you. It really is AMAZING. I'm a soggy dishrag, wrung out from all of this wisdom. And it's only 8 AM here. I read through this entire thing and agreed with almost every inch of it, and when I was finished I thought, "I should really pay for this" and I went to become a paid subscriber only to discover I already was one! So yay for me.
I should really do that Zoom thing, but the truth is, as much as you want to come off as this bumpkin who just throws stuff out there, I know better. You know things. You write like a son of a gun.
You quote others who are maybe even more amazing. Like this from Cal Flynn, in an essay I'm going to read as soon as I leave here:
“A quotation, commonly attributed to the writer and pioneering French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, says: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” This, if I ever read one, is a manifesto for nature writing in the present day. This is our own task: to evoke the experience of being in this wild and beautiful world. To stir people to love the planet with a jealous passion, to act in a way more befitting of a custodian or even lover. Go in through the heart, and the head will follow…
We need to be roused. We need to feel. We need a siren song that lures unsuspecting souls to the cause: a song to enchant us, to put us to work.”
Yes, writers, in order to be good, must be intensely curious about everything. Everything has to hit us as interesting, if not fascinating. Every encounter, every scene, every vignette is a story to be told. And we do need to feel. There's not enough of that.
But now I'm going to work on that book I've been promising forever, not because I have a plan, or because you told me to, even though you haven't done it yet, either, but because these thousands of amazing words have energized me.
If I write better after having read this, you're to blame. If I don't, I'm to blame. Either way, here's the obligatory 'thank you'.
Hi Mike - You're still an idiot !
This doesn't feel strange / awkward AT ALL..... 🤪
Hi Mike! You’re still an idiot.
Hi Mike! You’re still an idiot.
Hi Mike, an idiot you still are! 😎
Hi Mike, you’re still an idiot.
Hi Mike! You're still an idiot.
Hi Mike, you’re still an idiot.
Hi Mike! You’re still an idiot.
Hi Mike! You’re still an idiot.
Hi Mike! You’re still an idiot. I don’t know if I agree with that, but I think I see what you are doing.
Hi Mike! You’re still an idiot.
Mi, Mike! You're still an idiot (and I'm behind on emails).