Why write?
On joining Substack, finding a community, and the positive effects of writing
At the start of 2023, I decided to join Substack—a new-ish platform dedicated to writers. I’d written sporadically in the past, posting an article or two on Medium and LinkedIn. But I was drawn to Substack early-on because of the community that is on this platform. It felt like a softer, safer community than you find on X (formerly Twitter), has more variety than I find on Medium, and is a far more casual space than LinkedIn.
On Substack I gather creative career guidance from
, brilliant product design and growth insights from ’s brilliant podcast, creative inspiration from’s 5 Big Ideas and recently I’ve been loving the deep dives on creative process with ’s Subtle Maneuvers.I learned the art of publishing on Substack from a business-woman I’ve long admired
and am picking up more learnings on writing and engagement from with Sarah Fay.Publishing has always been at the center of my career, too. I began my first job after university with Hoffman Media (later F+W Media) as a designer and eventual art director doing everything from storyboarding to styling photoshoots to building the page layouts for an array of books and magazines. Later on I shifted into IT and transferred my skills to UX design for SaaS (Software as a Service) companies… a massive culture shift, but the fundamentals were always the same—create a hypothesis for a product or service, test it with the market, iterate on it, publish, rinse and repeat.
Honing in
When I joined Substack in January 2023, I wanted to share lessons about how creative thinking can be nourished and practiced to enable each of us to tap into our own wells of creativity—so that we can do extraordinary things.
So far, I’ve shared some personal anecdotes—stories about how I’ve leveraged creative principles to do things like: painting and giving away 500 original works of art, running a marathon, and renovating my house. I elaborate on principles I’ve learned in my career—things like systems thinking, rapid iteration, design thinking, and strategy—as methods to explore personal growth, wellbeing and pursuing one’s goals.
But as I’ve been writing, I’ve discovered that I have a little more to give, lessons I’ve learned throughout my life to be more centered, focused and balanced. Because I believe that in order to tap into our inner creative states, our state of the art, one needs to commit to practices of self-care, compassion, awareness and love.
The untangling effect of writing
Writing forces you to think about and frame things in a cohesive way. You might have a multi-dimensional spectrum of ideas swirling around inside of your head, but if you commit to just snapping off one idea at a time and encapsulating it in a piece of writing, you’ll uncover the categories and components of your mind. Writing forces you to organize and tease out your thoughts into coherent streams, and helps you to further develop your knowledge by inviting you to explore and research areas that aren’t as familiar to you.
To be honest, it’s a practice that still intimidates me at times, because it requires a level of vulnerability that can be a little uncomfortable. But I get through this by framing it as a practice—like lifting weights. I started with ‘light weights’ and have been progressing from there, improving my technique as I go along, with occasional help from professionals.
And I like to think that by writing, reading, and engaging with one another… as Ram Dass put it,
“We are all just walking each other home.”
Writing and publishing is a community act—and so as we write, read, share, comment and provide feedback to one another, we help each other to “walk home,” to find clarity and essence in our works.
Writing has also helped me to untangle the threads of things I want to write about. State of the Art often references things I’ve learned in my professional career; but doesn’t speak to the practice and profession of product and service design. So I started a new thread—another newsletter called The Things We Build—to give me a channel through which I can explore this topic.
The two newsletters feel like my yin and yang. State of the Art provides a space for me to explore the very nature of creativity, while The Things We Build provides a space for me to elaborate on industry best practices for product and service designers. And each one certainly influences the other.
Writing as a practice
I set up my Substack account in January 2023, but it wasn’t until October that I established a meaningful writing practice that looks like this:
⏰ Writing 2-3 days a week, for 30-45 minutes at a time to work on drafts
🔍 Refining, editing, proof-reading my article(s) for 1-2 hrs on Saturday or Sunday before publishing
🌄 Publish once per week on Sunday for State of the Art—every other week for The Things We Build
📖 Reading, commenting and sharing the work of others on Substack — this is part of my practice because it contributes to a feedback loop that keeps me inspired and moving forward, plus the engagement helps others to find my work
👩🎓 Taking in a writer’s workshop or participating in some kind of writing exercise each week—like
webinars, or recently I’ve been doing the “Two Voices” writing practice from David Milch, shared by on Subtle Maneuvers.You can read more about how I thought about and developed my practice here:
Invitation
This week I want to leave you with an invitation to write more, even if you don’t publish; to engage more, even if you feel shy; to try sharing your thoughts or experiences in a way that might make you feel vulnerable, with the knowledge that you’ll gain something in return. And at the end of the day… if it really wasn’t meant to be, you can always hit the delete button and try again 😉
If you’ve read this far, thank you. I appreciate you being here with me.
Tell me more: I’d love to hear about your writing practice or any writing exercises or experiments you’ve enjoyed in the comments section!
If you enjoyed this, please subscribe and share it with your friends! I’ll write again next week with more insights on the state of the art.
Thank you so much for the shout-out and for exposing me to new writers on this platform! (Yourself included!)