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How do we write, how do we act, how do we feel about platforms trying to own the relationship between writers and readers?

Writing in Fragments

Sacha shares their writing process and like many does a bit of lamenting about the lack of uninterrupted time to write. I also get the pain of being interrupted by kids when I’m trying to focus. In my worst moments as a parent I yell at them, usually when it’s the 3rd interruption but I have 3 kids so none of them realized that I was being interrupted every 3 minutes. They passed each other without the recognition that they mostly came to ask the same question.

Now I try to write this Saturday post Friday morning, or in fragments throughout the week. I work to write book club on Saturday when I take myself to the local bookstore and coffee shop after I do a skating drop off (Kid 3) and pickup (Kid 1).

Kindness Costs Nothing

This is one of the rules I try to impart to my children. While not everyone is worth your focused attention, everyone is worth some kindness. It costs us nothing to be gracious to the overworked server at a restaurant. The 4 seconds we have to wait when we let someone in front of us does’t matter at all.

Just be kind.

Substack gives me Medium Vibes

Reading through this post that doesn’t think Substack is a viable business. I get the vibes Medium used to give. When Medium launched I cross-posted all my blog content there as an early form of POSSE. It felt like a vibrant community where I got new comments, was included in round ups, and got traffic back to my site and my other content.

Now Medium is not that beast and I haven’t looked at it in years. Sure I know a few writers there and I have subscribed to their RSS feeds but when I see a medium link in a search I generally avoid it.

One problem with Substack as a platform is that they’re already going down the enshittification path. When Substack released Notes I rolled my eyes because they’re simply trying to be a social network with short form content. It was almost a year after Musk purchased Twitter and started to turn it into the hellhole it is now. Substack saw an opportunity to maybe capture that crowd and bring it over to Substack.

Now I see a Substack link and roll my eyes. I’m not at the avoid state, but I wonder why the writer doesn’t just own their content and if you want email integrate with something like Kit (affiliate link) that’s what I do for book club and this newsletter. This gives me control of the content and lets me reach email subscribers.

But Substack has deep pockets full of money for now so they’ll keep attracting users until they stop caring about them and start taking more value/money for themselves.