Louisa, you inspire me! The little whisper in my head feels heard now that I found your Substack. How refreshing to see a writer have a side of them that acknowledges the hateful side of writing. I'm so glad writing has been a healing medium for you. It's the same with me, which is why I got back into writing from a seven year hiatus. I used to write for pure pleasure, like silly romances or wacky poems. Life threw one too many curveballs and I can't seem to access that side...but I feel a small bud of it blossoming after reading just a bit of your work. I'm so grateful.
Hi Sharon! Thank you for reflecting back to me how this post and my Substack have led to a quiet unfolding of the writer's petals inside you. I'm grateful that you read this and subscribed. Some of my early pieces here have gone unnoticed. It made my day knowing that you resonated.
I love this! While Louisa may write for her own reasons, the end result is illuminating for us all. And such beautiful writing it is. "Those diary pages were the shore for these uncontrollable waves to crash."
Writing is my thought process. And yes, it is work, not play! But I don't really understand something until I write about it.
Hi Lisa, thank you so much for reading this post from the time I just got started on Substack. I'm glad that you resonated with my feelings about writing. It's so true that writing is work! Sometimes it is very very hard work. I wish society would ascribe more appreciation and value to this work. Regardless, it is the work that we do to excavate our psyche and connect with our soul, and I wouldn't trade it for anything else. Let's keep writing!
I think one of the challenges for us is that for readers it is also work-- we are bucking the tide of the whole TLDR culture we live in. I see this on social media, where people are more willing to engage in a photo than even a short block of text.
If we were photographers or cartoonists, a lot more people would be willing to consume our creative output!
What you said is, sadly, true. As a writer, I've witnessed trends that blew more and more headwinds against high-quality writing and curiosity for learning. The most concerning, to me, are short-form videos that fire up people's mid brain (rather than prefrontal cortex). This format is the antithesis of slow and thoughtful digestion and reflection of ideas. I think Substack turned the tide somewhat in the beginning. But the social media-ization of this platform may turn the readers here back into embracing the TLDR culture. After all, we only have that many hours and mental bandwidth a day. I don't know what we can, as a society, stop the hamster wheel from spinning, when we are all put into a gigantic one. Personally, I have to make an extra effort to give myself a mental and emotional break from time to time, so that my creative well can be replenished.
Louisa, you inspire me! The little whisper in my head feels heard now that I found your Substack. How refreshing to see a writer have a side of them that acknowledges the hateful side of writing. I'm so glad writing has been a healing medium for you. It's the same with me, which is why I got back into writing from a seven year hiatus. I used to write for pure pleasure, like silly romances or wacky poems. Life threw one too many curveballs and I can't seem to access that side...but I feel a small bud of it blossoming after reading just a bit of your work. I'm so grateful.
Hi Sharon! Thank you for reflecting back to me how this post and my Substack have led to a quiet unfolding of the writer's petals inside you. I'm grateful that you read this and subscribed. Some of my early pieces here have gone unnoticed. It made my day knowing that you resonated.
I love this! While Louisa may write for her own reasons, the end result is illuminating for us all. And such beautiful writing it is. "Those diary pages were the shore for these uncontrollable waves to crash."
Writing is my thought process. And yes, it is work, not play! But I don't really understand something until I write about it.
Hi Lisa, thank you so much for reading this post from the time I just got started on Substack. I'm glad that you resonated with my feelings about writing. It's so true that writing is work! Sometimes it is very very hard work. I wish society would ascribe more appreciation and value to this work. Regardless, it is the work that we do to excavate our psyche and connect with our soul, and I wouldn't trade it for anything else. Let's keep writing!
I think one of the challenges for us is that for readers it is also work-- we are bucking the tide of the whole TLDR culture we live in. I see this on social media, where people are more willing to engage in a photo than even a short block of text.
If we were photographers or cartoonists, a lot more people would be willing to consume our creative output!
What you said is, sadly, true. As a writer, I've witnessed trends that blew more and more headwinds against high-quality writing and curiosity for learning. The most concerning, to me, are short-form videos that fire up people's mid brain (rather than prefrontal cortex). This format is the antithesis of slow and thoughtful digestion and reflection of ideas. I think Substack turned the tide somewhat in the beginning. But the social media-ization of this platform may turn the readers here back into embracing the TLDR culture. After all, we only have that many hours and mental bandwidth a day. I don't know what we can, as a society, stop the hamster wheel from spinning, when we are all put into a gigantic one. Personally, I have to make an extra effort to give myself a mental and emotional break from time to time, so that my creative well can be replenished.