I have come to realise that a huge part of my day is sharing the of pieces whatever I'm working on or planning in the studio. I do this on instagram and I post them to Stories because the nature of them expiring after 24 hours means I don't have to think too carefully about how to present them.
It's fairly intimate, as far as business updates go. This is mine and I'm inviting everyone to mind it.
The thing is, as a consumer of other people's work (books, films, art, even flower farming) I love the process and I've realised it's a hugely important part of how I understand the choices that are made that lead to the final result. In other words, it's almost everything to me. They shouldn’t time-out.
I'm not inviting you to hop on instagram, the landscape over there is changing and I find myself wishing for something more like the social journal it used to be. It feels too close to offering someone a vodka at 11am. You do you, but I don't want to be the cheerleader for anything potentially damaging.
To get to the point: I have started a Substack. For the uninitiated, it's simply a blog with a subscription model. Every time I post, subscribers will receive an email. It's automated, it's easy and it's a means for some people to regain control over their content and make some money. Instagram is no longer where you go to stay up to date and newsletters should carry news- I don’t want to blast your inbox with my navel gazing unless you’re actually interested in it.
I'm not looking to commodify my process either. Substack and Patreon both carry the implication that there’s a paywall: I'm not charging a subscription fee, I just want to exist on a secondary platform where I can post more in-depth and reach people who are actually keen to see more.
In the future, if requests come in for in-depth process work that would take a significant amount of time, it might make sense to paywall that specific piece of content but right now I'm just diarising the minutia of my desk/bench/easel.
Leave a comment