I find it hard to schedule my posts because I can't wait to see my name in print. More seriously, I've always tried to do the things I'm afraid of failing at. I shall write about that one of these days. (Once I've got some reviews out of the way along with some other planned posts.) I always think of Woody Allen's comment, which can be applied to anything in my opinion: 80% of success is showing up.
And you’re absolutely right - showing up, of course, is crucial. Thank you so much for your comment - wise words, all of them.
I do try, of course I do. It’s just that I often feel that I’d PREFER not to risk failure: it’s not that I don’t try. I think I’m rather too black and white about it: if I don’t do A then that awful thing B doesn’t have the opportunity to happen. But trust me, I still show up! Well, most of the time. 🤣
It must be the week for it--I published my weekly post with a call for discussion but didn’t realize I had not clicked the proper button to allow comments.🤦🏻♀️ So instead of quietly correcting, I sent another post announcing my mistake and embarrassment! When we let others see us as the imperfect humans that we are, it builds connection, I think. Here’s to failure!🍻
I was doing an IT training session once and suddenly the technology failed. I sailed on, but afterwards one of the delegates said he was really pleased it had happened. Why? Because if it can happen to you it means we're allowed to have it happen to us!
LOL, Holly! I loved how you handled that last week! I think from a reader’s point of view, our own perceived ‘failures’ appear much less of a big deal than they do to ourselves when we’re the ones getting it ‘wrong’! You and I were an exclusive little club last week with our posting issues, and actually I really loved that! Go, us!!! 😊🏆🤣
I beg to differ. When Holly made that mistake I wrote to my local newspaper to complain about the sorry state of journalism these days, and started a petition about it in the hope of having it debated in Parliament. I know my rights.
Funnily enough, these little mistakes are one of my favorite things about Substack--they humanize other writers for me, and remind me that some of the best publications are run by a single, fallible person. It sounds counterintuitive, but it makes me feel more connected, because I am just a single, fallible writer too! Cheers to your (very small) failure and to handling it with grace ❤️
I also have that instinct to save frequently and often. I actually have lost About page changes before in the SS editor, mainly from toggling between apps or something. I also rely on post scheduling - I am generally not up at 5:30 AM my time to publish!
I'm glad it's not just me, Mark! Now you've got me wondering about other things that could go wrong - I'll be treading carefully next time I'm editing my About page. Thanks for the warning!
Your posts always land in my inbox at 9.30am GMT - until I'd found out about scheduling I'd naïvely assumed you were an early riser....!
Haha--this was great! Not so long ago, I sat down one morning wrote a gratitude list, thought “this isn’t bad,” hit publish, sat back and realized, “crap--it’s Monday--Jane writes on Mondays!!”
As I was reading your post, Rebecca, a show from the “On Being “ podcast came to mine where the host proposed the idea that there is great power in “living the question” - and not only living a question, but asking the meaningful , powerful questions. She emphasized sitting with a question that was impactful to you( e.g mine is “ what matters to me?truly, deeply?) every day for weeks or years and in living, the answer will reveal itself. This idea is based on a Rilke’s poem that says , “ you aren’t ready for the answer yet “, and goes on to talk about how living the question is essential to life.
Your post reminded me of that concept and I can’t say why exactly, but there’s something impactful about watching one another grow in real time.
Yes, I read that RILKE book in my early 20s... Letters To A Young Poet. Now at 63 I'm amazed how the answers do answer themselves if you keep asking the questions and looking for answers. I was amazed it took so long, but then when the answers came through the way they came through it all made sense and was totally worth the wait!
Yes ! I’ve had the experience of being “answered” or having something reveal itself but it’s never on my timeline - it really does take time and continued curiosity
Speaking on that, I was troubled that Lisa Marie Presley died saying this, “Grief does not stop or go away in any sense, a year, or years after the loss,” she said. “Grief is something you will have to carry with you for the rest of your life, in spite of what certain people or our culture wants us to believe.”
You are right about not on our timeline. My mom always used to say, "Man plans, God laughs."
This morning I was woken from a dream by a friend texting me she'd be driving by soon to pick up the sponges I promised her the night before. As I came out of the dream I remember only being asked in the dream, "What is on your wish list?" Standing downstairs waiting for her, half here and half not, I noticed a woman looking very much like my mom driving by, the way she looked in 2006 after her cancer treatment. About a minute later, a Spectrum van drove by as if following her, with the #27 on it. My brother was born on the 27th. He died almost 27 years before she did. Whether these were real signs from them or not, it feels like they are to me. I get messages constantly and always when I need them versus when I want them. I find it a wonderful comfort and too realistic too often, or too much coincidence to truly be a coincidence.
I understand that grief can debilitate as depression can, but there are known methods that lighten the load. It takes a slight effort instead of a much easier sinking back. Not having done a sit-up in probably 15 years I'm beginning to realize I better start doing them again or.... (supposed to bring on a chuckle here)
I love that "watching one another grow in real time." Love the Rilke quote too. Because there are no coincidences. Commit to the process. In real time of course.
You have the nicest community of readers. A real resonance here! I save and when I don't, that's when I lose stuff. It's a good thing to be hyper about that. Lose enough stuff and you learn that saving is easy enough and cost-effective (free) insurance preventing prolonged agony when worked out and edited stuff goes kaput.
May I ask? How do you get strike-through words onto the page?
Thanks so much, Lisa! My favourite part of Substack is chatting away to readers like this - I'm so glad you're one of them! Yes yes yes re 'insurance' - I'm with you!
The strike-through button is near the top left in the editor window - it's the button just to the right of the one just to the right of the icons for Bold and Italic. I was so excited to find it - although I do sometimes get carried away! 🤣
I really love you’ve made a whole post out of this! Hard relate... I feel like there’s something in my inner perfectionist that wants to send the post as soon as I’m finished so that I don’t pull the plug BUT I am also keen on a 6am scheduling time Sat/ Sun so being playful with that. Todays post was paused so I could add the last quote after I heard the song on the radio and knew it would round everything up 🎀 . Cx
We're much more 'immediate' with our use of words these days, aren't we? Often our online writing is as instant as our talking, especially on social media. I like strike-throughs because they show the journey my thoughts have gone through before I say what I'm actually trying to say!
I might be focusing on a minor point given what you have written, but I'm exploring the 'need to resolution thing'. Sometimes I feel like I need to be over an incident/have understood it/resolved it before I can write about it. I'm playing with writing things that are more resolution-less. It's an infusing tension to explore.
We tend to like things tied up in bows. But things without bows are interesting too.
That's such a good point, Medha! I've found through my writing process that sometimes I haven't established a resolution for something that in fact is done, dusted and dealt with in my life, and when I'm writing about it I find that end up exploring other sides of it. It's the thing that's surprised me the most, actually, since I started to write. But I love that that's what makes it so exciting!
I adore your analogy of the bows - that's absolutely brilliant. You're so right that not everything needs to be tied in a bow to be interesting!
Just remember we are not perfect! We might think we are but we are not. Everyone makes mistakes.
The scheduling of posts option seems like a good idea for me now that my schedule has changed so much. But I read that some people were having problems with their readers not getting the posts. And I don't dare try it and then have problems. So when I get time, I already have it written, so I just send it out.
As far as saving your docs, depending on your program, you should have an autosave option. Then you wouldn't have to worry about it. Just set it for 1 minute or so.
Gosh, I hadn't heard of readers not getting scheduled posts - that's a worry. And on that score, I've just been experiencing another gremlin in the works - comments relating to this post, from three different subscribers, have landed in the comments section of a different post altogether - the one I published the week before Christmas! So that's a concern too, now. I've contacted Support, because it just seems a bit odd.
I've got autosave set up in Word and Excel, but thanks for the tip! I still find myself doing Ctrl S about every ten seconds, though. More like autosave plus autopilot....!
There’s this great anecdote about E.L. Doctorow browsing the fiction section, finding an error in his own book & editing it in the aisle of the bookstore. I always schedule my posts so I don’t have to hit publish. Otherwise, I’d never send anything out because I’d be editing my posts forever!
And I'm exactly the same as you - although the whole act of scheduling also gives me carte blanche to edit my posts up until the SECOND before they are published..... so it's not really the perfect answer! 🤣
Oh yes, I totally do that too. That's why I set the publishing time for earlyish in the morning, so I'm just having my coffee when they go live. I'll read it once over on Sunday evening and then call it done. I've also found that the pressure of the following week's post has been a very helpful constraint. I've never written so much so quickly before, and I'm learning a lot through the process. Most importantly: I've learned that there is some editing that is just so stylistic and idiosyncratic that no one but me would notice. I'm trying to train myself not to focus on those things. It's tough!
I find it hard to schedule my posts because I can't wait to see my name in print. More seriously, I've always tried to do the things I'm afraid of failing at. I shall write about that one of these days. (Once I've got some reviews out of the way along with some other planned posts.) I always think of Woody Allen's comment, which can be applied to anything in my opinion: 80% of success is showing up.
‘Name in print’ - LOL, Terry!
And you’re absolutely right - showing up, of course, is crucial. Thank you so much for your comment - wise words, all of them.
I do try, of course I do. It’s just that I often feel that I’d PREFER not to risk failure: it’s not that I don’t try. I think I’m rather too black and white about it: if I don’t do A then that awful thing B doesn’t have the opportunity to happen. But trust me, I still show up! Well, most of the time. 🤣
It must be the week for it--I published my weekly post with a call for discussion but didn’t realize I had not clicked the proper button to allow comments.🤦🏻♀️ So instead of quietly correcting, I sent another post announcing my mistake and embarrassment! When we let others see us as the imperfect humans that we are, it builds connection, I think. Here’s to failure!🍻
I was doing an IT training session once and suddenly the technology failed. I sailed on, but afterwards one of the delegates said he was really pleased it had happened. Why? Because if it can happen to you it means we're allowed to have it happen to us!
That’s brilliant, Terry!
LOL, Holly! I loved how you handled that last week! I think from a reader’s point of view, our own perceived ‘failures’ appear much less of a big deal than they do to ourselves when we’re the ones getting it ‘wrong’! You and I were an exclusive little club last week with our posting issues, and actually I really loved that! Go, us!!! 😊🏆🤣
I beg to differ. When Holly made that mistake I wrote to my local newspaper to complain about the sorry state of journalism these days, and started a petition about it in the hope of having it debated in Parliament. I know my rights.
🤣
😂
🤣
Funnily enough, these little mistakes are one of my favorite things about Substack--they humanize other writers for me, and remind me that some of the best publications are run by a single, fallible person. It sounds counterintuitive, but it makes me feel more connected, because I am just a single, fallible writer too! Cheers to your (very small) failure and to handling it with grace ❤️
Sam, thank you for this really thoughtful comment - it’s made my day! Yay to feeling more connected! 😊
All your readership was delighted to get their treat a day early 🥰 Also, co-sign what Samantha said.
(Also also, their UI on that page is weird.)
(Also also also, book?! Yay!!!)
Thanks, Bryn! Agreed re their interface - they're certainly not going out of their way to make things obvious.
(Book is filed under the 'one day' tab. We'll see!)
I also have that instinct to save frequently and often. I actually have lost About page changes before in the SS editor, mainly from toggling between apps or something. I also rely on post scheduling - I am generally not up at 5:30 AM my time to publish!
I'm glad it's not just me, Mark! Now you've got me wondering about other things that could go wrong - I'll be treading carefully next time I'm editing my About page. Thanks for the warning!
Your posts always land in my inbox at 9.30am GMT - until I'd found out about scheduling I'd naïvely assumed you were an early riser....!
We are all living on an extraordinarily dangerous planet these days. Keep writing like our lies depended on it. They might.
Haha--this was great! Not so long ago, I sat down one morning wrote a gratitude list, thought “this isn’t bad,” hit publish, sat back and realized, “crap--it’s Monday--Jane writes on Mondays!!”
Thanks so much! And re your 'crap it's Monday' - did we get a bonus post that day? If so, that's fabulous! 😊🙌
haha--no, i called Jane and apologized for accidentally writing on her day!
🤣
As I was reading your post, Rebecca, a show from the “On Being “ podcast came to mine where the host proposed the idea that there is great power in “living the question” - and not only living a question, but asking the meaningful , powerful questions. She emphasized sitting with a question that was impactful to you( e.g mine is “ what matters to me?truly, deeply?) every day for weeks or years and in living, the answer will reveal itself. This idea is based on a Rilke’s poem that says , “ you aren’t ready for the answer yet “, and goes on to talk about how living the question is essential to life.
Your post reminded me of that concept and I can’t say why exactly, but there’s something impactful about watching one another grow in real time.
Thanks for sharing this with us !
Gosh, Camille, thank you! Tonnes to think about! 😃
Yes, I read that RILKE book in my early 20s... Letters To A Young Poet. Now at 63 I'm amazed how the answers do answer themselves if you keep asking the questions and looking for answers. I was amazed it took so long, but then when the answers came through the way they came through it all made sense and was totally worth the wait!
Yes ! I’ve had the experience of being “answered” or having something reveal itself but it’s never on my timeline - it really does take time and continued curiosity
Speaking on that, I was troubled that Lisa Marie Presley died saying this, “Grief does not stop or go away in any sense, a year, or years after the loss,” she said. “Grief is something you will have to carry with you for the rest of your life, in spite of what certain people or our culture wants us to believe.”
You are right about not on our timeline. My mom always used to say, "Man plans, God laughs."
This morning I was woken from a dream by a friend texting me she'd be driving by soon to pick up the sponges I promised her the night before. As I came out of the dream I remember only being asked in the dream, "What is on your wish list?" Standing downstairs waiting for her, half here and half not, I noticed a woman looking very much like my mom driving by, the way she looked in 2006 after her cancer treatment. About a minute later, a Spectrum van drove by as if following her, with the #27 on it. My brother was born on the 27th. He died almost 27 years before she did. Whether these were real signs from them or not, it feels like they are to me. I get messages constantly and always when I need them versus when I want them. I find it a wonderful comfort and too realistic too often, or too much coincidence to truly be a coincidence.
I understand that grief can debilitate as depression can, but there are known methods that lighten the load. It takes a slight effort instead of a much easier sinking back. Not having done a sit-up in probably 15 years I'm beginning to realize I better start doing them again or.... (supposed to bring on a chuckle here)
No coincidences at all. Trust the process. It talks back to us in real time.
I love that "watching one another grow in real time." Love the Rilke quote too. Because there are no coincidences. Commit to the process. In real time of course.
What a lovely post, Rebecca. Good to hear that you can laugh about your little mistake.
Thanks so much, Alicja!
You have the nicest community of readers. A real resonance here! I save and when I don't, that's when I lose stuff. It's a good thing to be hyper about that. Lose enough stuff and you learn that saving is easy enough and cost-effective (free) insurance preventing prolonged agony when worked out and edited stuff goes kaput.
May I ask? How do you get strike-through words onto the page?
Thanks so much, Lisa! My favourite part of Substack is chatting away to readers like this - I'm so glad you're one of them! Yes yes yes re 'insurance' - I'm with you!
The strike-through button is near the top left in the editor window - it's the button just to the right of the one just to the right of the icons for Bold and Italic. I was so excited to find it - although I do sometimes get carried away! 🤣
I really love you’ve made a whole post out of this! Hard relate... I feel like there’s something in my inner perfectionist that wants to send the post as soon as I’m finished so that I don’t pull the plug BUT I am also keen on a 6am scheduling time Sat/ Sun so being playful with that. Todays post was paused so I could add the last quote after I heard the song on the radio and knew it would round everything up 🎀 . Cx
Thanks, Claire! And that was a GREAT post of yours today - I'm so glad to have read it! I'm hoping to come along to your Zoom workshop tomorrow. 😊
Go, Rebecca: generous, vulnerable and kind. You connect resolutions with failure while you go succeed. Well-done.
Always so kind, Mary - thank you so much! 😊
Hmmm... I will have to look for that. I used a strike-through in my book title. I'm with you on being carried away with them!
Use of the strike-through seems totally in sync with the times we live in.
We're much more 'immediate' with our use of words these days, aren't we? Often our online writing is as instant as our talking, especially on social media. I like strike-throughs because they show the journey my thoughts have gone through before I say what I'm actually trying to say!
I might be focusing on a minor point given what you have written, but I'm exploring the 'need to resolution thing'. Sometimes I feel like I need to be over an incident/have understood it/resolved it before I can write about it. I'm playing with writing things that are more resolution-less. It's an infusing tension to explore.
We tend to like things tied up in bows. But things without bows are interesting too.
That's such a good point, Medha! I've found through my writing process that sometimes I haven't established a resolution for something that in fact is done, dusted and dealt with in my life, and when I'm writing about it I find that end up exploring other sides of it. It's the thing that's surprised me the most, actually, since I started to write. But I love that that's what makes it so exciting!
I adore your analogy of the bows - that's absolutely brilliant. You're so right that not everything needs to be tied in a bow to be interesting!
Trust the process we are all a part of - in real time.
Just remember we are not perfect! We might think we are but we are not. Everyone makes mistakes.
The scheduling of posts option seems like a good idea for me now that my schedule has changed so much. But I read that some people were having problems with their readers not getting the posts. And I don't dare try it and then have problems. So when I get time, I already have it written, so I just send it out.
As far as saving your docs, depending on your program, you should have an autosave option. Then you wouldn't have to worry about it. Just set it for 1 minute or so.
You're so right, Matt!
Gosh, I hadn't heard of readers not getting scheduled posts - that's a worry. And on that score, I've just been experiencing another gremlin in the works - comments relating to this post, from three different subscribers, have landed in the comments section of a different post altogether - the one I published the week before Christmas! So that's a concern too, now. I've contacted Support, because it just seems a bit odd.
I've got autosave set up in Word and Excel, but thanks for the tip! I still find myself doing Ctrl S about every ten seconds, though. More like autosave plus autopilot....!
There’s this great anecdote about E.L. Doctorow browsing the fiction section, finding an error in his own book & editing it in the aisle of the bookstore. I always schedule my posts so I don’t have to hit publish. Otherwise, I’d never send anything out because I’d be editing my posts forever!
Wow, great anecdote, Jillian!
And I'm exactly the same as you - although the whole act of scheduling also gives me carte blanche to edit my posts up until the SECOND before they are published..... so it's not really the perfect answer! 🤣
Oh yes, I totally do that too. That's why I set the publishing time for earlyish in the morning, so I'm just having my coffee when they go live. I'll read it once over on Sunday evening and then call it done. I've also found that the pressure of the following week's post has been a very helpful constraint. I've never written so much so quickly before, and I'm learning a lot through the process. Most importantly: I've learned that there is some editing that is just so stylistic and idiosyncratic that no one but me would notice. I'm trying to train myself not to focus on those things. It's tough!