What to write in a newsletter

A newsletter about how I write newsletters

Quick announcements before today’s post: there is just one spot left for Zine Lab, my four week workshop to guide you through the zine making process! We begin next Tuesday, so it’s not too late to sign up.

Thanks to all who joined last week’s Make a One Page ‘About Me’ Zine workshop! Here’s some sweet feedback from an attendee: “I’ve always been intrigued by zines, but didn’t quite understand exactly what or how to make one. So this was really great in sort of breaking the ice and taking any sort of pressure off! And now I have ideas for others!” You can watch the recording here.

My own spring zine challenge is well underway—I’ve been heads down finalizing production on two new zines/art books. Read more about zines here and stay tuned for more updates in a few weeks!

Deciding what to write

On Tuesday my sister Irene and I laid on my couch post-dinner, wondering what we were going to write about for our newsletters this week. (Irene is an amazing food writer and chef who just started her Substack!)

She pulled out her Notion page of newsletter ideas, which looks similar to my own list below. As we riffed on which of her ideas might want to come to fruition this week, we also brainstormed new ideas that felt more timely.

A truncated list of ideas for future posts

Our “what should I write about?” conversation sparked an idea that perhaps I should document my willy-nilly process of writing SEE YOU for over five years.

Before we begin, please know everything I share is simply what works for me, and different systems and strategies might work for you—so take my words with a grain of salt. May this post be helpful to any of you writing your own newsletters looking to find your groove!

Starting out

Time and again I see people scared by the idea of starting a newsletter more than, let’s say, starting an Instagram. The newsletter feels more official than throwing up an image on social media. It signifies that you want to take your writing and your art seriously—how embarrassing.

Let’s say you temporarily put that fear aside and are ready to start your newsletter on Substack.¹ Hooray! You press that “Start Writing” button and are immediately brought to the blank draft page. Oh no, you’re not ready to publish yet.

The blank page—or in this case, the blank Substack draft screen

You crave some hand holding, so you go back to your dashboard and are met with a scary checklist.² Upload a logo? Turn on paid? Get subscribers? But you haven’t even written anything.

This list might make sense for writers and creators with existing audiences on other platforms (and this is exactly who Substack is trying to court). But if you are a new writer figuring out how to start a newsletter as a creative practice, I’d recommend going in reverse order. You must write your first post, and then several more, before caring about anything else. Few things pain me more than a beautifully branded newsletter that hasn’t been updated in a year.

Off you go back to the empty draft, wondering what you should write about. Here are two reliable formats to get you started:

The curated roundup:

Before the rise of Substack essays and interviews, most newsletters I subscribed to consisted of link roundups and recommendations (Dense Discovery, CreativeMornings, Ann Friedman).

The newsletter remains an amazing tool for discovery and curation, and it decenters you so you don’t need to confront your creative block every time you draft a newsletter. My version of the curated roundup is 7 Things, which I plan to return to when I’m in vacation mode this summer.

To write a general roundup, collect links you enjoyed reading, photos you took, products you like, and any other media consumed that you’d like to evangelize.

You can also write specific roundups for a category of things. I love nerding out about art supplies, reviewing materials and sharing my favorites. Maybe your niche is books, style, stationery, or simply shit you bought and liked. With this approach you get to start building an audience with overlapping interests and tastes.

Newsletter faves that use the roundup: Dear Somebody by Meera Lee Patel, The Sometimes Newsletter by Ella Frances Sanders, postcards by elle

The life update:

When you’re starting out, your subscribers will mainly be friends and family. Guess what they care about? You and your earthly life!

Imagine a good friend asks, “what have you been up to?” Whatever your response is, write it all out on the page. Add photos from your camera roll. Whether you stayed home all month journaling or just came back from vacation in Asia, write down any observations that you want to remember. If you’re sharing about art you made, include any reflections on the process.

Newsletter faves that use the life update: Making It Work by Youngna Park, Tender Dispatches by Christine Tyler Hill, vrk loves paper by Victoria Kirst

Commitment over growth

The Substack dashboard checklist above prioritizes growing your newsletter. It wants you to share your newsletter, grow your subscriber count, and ultimately convert them to paid so Substack can take 10% of a cut of revenue. If you keep your newsletter free, Substack makes nothing!

But when you’re just starting a newsletter, commitment is your goal. Not growth in subscribers or revenue, not even consistency in what you write about. Showing up every week or month or whatever cadence you set is the real win. When you prove to yourself you can show up and commit, you grow confidence that you can do harder things. With this confidence, you can start getting more vulnerable, more experimental, more you.

This very newsletter started in 2019 with a weekly recap of my experience doing The Artist’s Way, which is also an endeavor in commitment through daily morning pages and weekly artist dates. No amount of fancy branding or paid newsletter strategy will ever beat this kind of commitment to yourself. By prioritizing commitment, you can trust in your ability to deliver if you ever do want to start thinking about expanding your newsletter and going paid.

Idea overwhelm

If you’ve been writing your newsletter for a while now, the question of “what should I write about?” doesn’t stem from having nothing to write about, but the very opposite—perhaps you have too much to write about, and you can’t quite choose. Nothing feels inspiring, or you’re tired of writing about the same topic over and over.

Remember the truncated list of my post ideas at the beginning of this post? This is its actual length:

Any time I have a random spark of inspiration on the subway or before going to sleep, I toss it into this Notion database ether. So many ideas—enough to sustain a whole year’s worth of posts!

I am grateful to have this list; it gives me great comfort to have a repository of ideas. I’m able to see what topics interest me over time, which gives me a clue how to “brand” my newsletter. When I’m feeling the urge to plan and organize, I’ll sometimes turn the list into a content calendar by assigning dates to certain posts.

But nowadays, I don’t look at this list at all when deciding what to write about each week. The decision of what to write is a completely intuitive one, guided by two questions:

• What’s on the top of my mind?

• What would feel good to write?³

When I write according to a preplanned content calendar, or even when I batch write posts and schedule them for future weeks, something feels off. The writing doesn’t feel as fresh or authentic. Despite wanting to grow my newsletter, I also don’t want to treat it like a content mill and see my writing suffer.

Though SEE YOU is about creative practice, it’s also heavily infused with my own thoughts and feelings. I am told this is what people like about my newsletter(!) When you read my words in your inbox, I want you to feel like I am earnestly sharing something I care about, even if it looks a little different each time. This is why using my intuition is my north star for writing this newsletter.

My favorite newsletter formats

As SEE YOU has grown, I’ve found that I consistently reach for these five categories of newsletter posts:

The personal essay:

Every so often I will be visited by a mind demon that I need to exorcise through a personal essay. My posts on money fears and internet compulsions are two that come to mind that fall into this category. It’s a big craft challenge to write a good personal essay, and I am still very much learning to write better ones. Still, this newsletter would not exist without the personal essay and I love connecting with readers after sharing more vulnerable writing.

Newsletter faves that use the personal essay: Everything is Liminal by Jenna Park, manners & mystery by Elaine Wang

The how to:

Using my newsletter as a platform to clarify and share what I’ve learned is super rewarding. I’ve shared about note taking, editorial illustration, and more recently, making one page zines. The how to posts are a mix of process and prompts—rarely as detailed as a class or workshop, but good enough to start. These posts will not be interesting to all readers, but they have immense value to the readers who are interested.

Newsletter faves that use the how to: DrawTogether with Wendy MacNaughton, The Museum of Small and Important Things by Allie Sullberg

The sketchbook share:

I’m always excited when it’s the right time to share my journals and sketchbooks, partially because the work is already done but also because the pages are both imperfect and personal. These posts are image heavy, which can be such a visual and mental reprieve from the dense and wordy Substack posts out there.

Newsletter faves that use the sketchbook share: Out to See by Louise Gouet, The Little Things by Cait Brennan, Sketch and the City by Lucia Vinti

The opinion piece:

To publicly state my opinion I need to feel it strongly, which is quite rare. But when I do have a hot take and write about it, it pays dividends. My posts on the need to take fewer art classes or my skepticism of moving from Instagram to Cara were both widely shared and thus able to reach new people.

Newsletter faves that use the opinion piece: Culture Study by Anne Helen Petersen, The Twelfth House by Holisticism

The interview:

From time to time I’ll schedule a call with an artist acquaintance and interview them for Meet My Art Friend! I haven’t done this in a while because it’s time intensive but it’s really fun to do, and I love amplifying my friends and their work.

Newsletter faves that use the interview: A reading life by Petya Grady, Creative Fuel by Anna Brones

What do you love to write (or read) in a newsletter?

Tell me, what kinds of newsletter posts do you love to write or read? Do you have any system of choosing what to write, or do you go off intuitive vibes? 📝

1. Your newsletter absolutely does not have to be hosted on Substack, but I will reference the platform here for convenience.

2. This is my first time seeing the user flow for starting a Substack and it is truly intimidating!

3. Good is fun and exciting, of course. But good is also cathartic and healing! Many of my favorite posts are the ones I’ve written after a period of emotional turmoil.