Writing on the internet is an interesting thing. It’s trivially easy to use social media and make it so that somebody is reading what you are writing.
There’s a subtle difference between having a reader and what a writer actually wants. When you write, you want your words to have an impact on someone.
If you put your words out on the internet along with the unfathomably other words everyone has access to, people treat your words as the same as all those other words. If a person places zero value on the time he spends writing words, everyone else responds accordingly.
When I assert that the time I spend writing has value, that changes how you read what I write, and it changes how I write what I write. It changes how you read those words because you ascribe those words a value, and you take them more seriously. It changes how I write those words because it creates a standard that my readers can uphold by giving feedback.
All of these incentives increase the probability that my writing has an impact. I am incentivized to write better. You are incentivized to read better. I am incentivized to write what you want to read. You are incentivized to tell me what you want to read.
That’s how we’ll specifically decide what I write. By my patrons telling me what they want to read. The earlier the patron, the more influence you will have on the types of articles I write. For all these reasons, my plan is that practically all of the articles on this substack will be behind a paywall.
I am agnostic on the specific types of articles I write. I want to write what you want to read. I like to write about the anime I watch because I like to think about everything I do, and writing is a form of thinking. If you came here from my MAL page, you have a sense of my writing abilities.
I’ll suggest some possibilities. I could write an article outlining all of my thoughts about an individual episode. I could write an article outlining my thoughts about a particular character. I could write an article outlining my thoughts about a certain theme.
If there’s an idea I presented on MAL that you want to hear more from me about, you could request that specifically and I would think of a way to turn it into an article.
I have no expectations of this Substack. If nobody subscribes, I’ll keep living my life, happy. I’ll probably write some articles now and then for an audience of zero because I enjoy writing about anime. If people subscribe, and make requests, I’ll start writing for them.
Writing is a form of thinking, and thinking is fun. Have a wonderful day.
