Year 1 with Write It Out
What did I write, what did you like, and what's next?
I started this newsletter in 2022 on January 7, with the intention of sharing my semi-regular thoughts on trauma, creative writing, narrative, and sexuality. In some ways it’s replaced my old healing blog, which is still up at my therapy website. In other ways it has indeed been the mixed thing I intended it to be: a place where my therapist self and my writer self come together, with a healthy dose of relationship talk. I note there hasn’t been a ton here about sexuality, perhaps because while I have a bit of expertise in that area, it’s become a less compelling topic to me than the larger topic of how we humans love and connect.
The newsletter title has survived the first year, although I was mixed on it when I started. It felt simultaneously too generic and too concise, and yet over time it’s grown on me. After all, isn’t that what I’ve been doing for basically my entire life, since I could write? I got my first diary when I was ten, but I was writing stories before then. I still have reams of notebooks, chronicling my rage and pain and love and terrible poetry through the decades. And of course, I started journaling online just as soon as that possibility became a reality. (Thanks, Diaryland, and thanks Livejournal for being the birthplace of the community I still somewhat travel in.)
Write it out. Get the feelings, the stories, onto the page. Make sense of it by getting it out of your head, out of your body. Give your mind space, even if it’s to start perseverating on the next thing.
But first: how’d this first year go?
Numbers, in brief
I started the year off writing a post a week, but then August saw me making a temporary move to Canada, and I needed a break. Then in September I caught Covid while in Halifax, and then I started a new gig which took up considerable hours in my week. I slowed my pace to biweekly, and then to monthly as travel, life, and work sucked up my time to contribute to this space.
All told, I made 38 posts last year. I gathered up 45 subscribers, though post views hover in the 70-100 range. I haven’t promoted this space very much, and I will say that I was on a fairly steady growth curve when I was posting weekly; that seems to be a good cadence that I might try to return to.
What’s next?
I think I’d really like to make more frequent, less dense posts. Monthly, or even biweekly posts are okay, but 1. they put a lot of pressure on me for them to be deep and complex — possibly to the point where people think “oh I’ll read this later” and then just don’t. (No judgment; it happens to me all the time. You should see my Chrome tabs. Actually no, nobody needs to see that.)
I think it would be worthwhile to use a short-to-medium-length post to introduce a single concept. The dissociation post I link below is a good example. The one on trauma is, too, and in that early post I promise to do posts on other concepts from the traumasphere, but I mostly didn’t do that. I spend a lot of time in my own traumatized brain worrying about whether my concepts are complex enough, whether I’m just parroting basics “everybody knows,” and whether my writing has value. Yet I myself resonate most strongly with writers about trauma who keep it simple. Imposter syndrome continues to be real, but I’m trying to give it less and less power.
I’d also like to turn on the chat function this year and see if we can get some conversation going. I love writing about this stuff, but I’d also love to hear from you about it. Getting our stories out is so important, but being seen and known in others’ stories may be even more so.
Your favorite posts
I’m not that interested in doing a huge metrics breakdown, but Substack has a handy menu in the dashboard that sorts my posts by “top.” According to that list, here were your top five faves:
5. Expanding my sliding scale as social justice
A piece about what sliding scales are, who they’re for, and how to empower clients to use them.
4. Debunking the idea that trauma generates creativity
The short version? Trauma actually tends to stunt creativity and growth. The people who make incredible art out of their horrible experiences? Are spectacular exceptions. Imagine what they could have done if they hadn’t been subject to horrors.
3. Noticing where I am, and where I’ve been.
An autobiographical post spanning 20 years, written as I recognized that I was staying in the Halifax neighborhood called the North End, exactly 20 years after I left the North End of Boston.
2. Positioning myself within queer community.
A tribute to Pride, for those of us who only ever skirted the margins of the margins. Or: a big gay post about my youthful struggles as a f*g hag and proto-queer.
1. Passionately pledging to talk about it.
The post that took weeks to write — an exploration of how the old writing advice, “show, don’t tell,” should be reversed if you want to avoid inflicting your traumatic habits on someone.
Honorable mentions
There are a few posts that didn’t get quite as much airplay, but that I’m pretty proud of, mostly from earlier in the year. Particularly if you’re new here, I hope you’ll check them out!
I've very much enjoyed your writing over the past year and found it inspiring a lot of reflection. I look forward to seeing where you go in 2023!