Happy Birthday and thank you
One year on the blog
A year ago, I started mucking around on Substack. Some of you have been there since that first post (about a search for a male role model, a topic I would return to approximately 8 million times in the following year). Regardless of when you joined - or even if this is your first post - thank you.
Substack’s a weird platform. I can’t quite decide if it’s terrific, or in a similar honeymoon stage to Twitter and Facebook circa 2010. Is this the happy times before the populist nightmarish downfall? I ended up writing about it for ArtsHub last week. I came to no solid conclusions. Only that Substack has filled a gap in a crumbling media world. It’s a way for individual writers to get real support. And the writers who publish on the platform are no joke.
Salmin Rushdie is writing a novel on it. Patti Smith is writing poetry. Margaret Atwood is writing about history and any darn thing that interests her. George Saunders runs short story masterclasses. Elizabeth Gilbert is channelling divine beings (no, really). Other Aussie icons include Clementine Ford and Charlotte Wood and John Birmingham.
And then there’s the weird and beautiful nooks and crannies you find on the platform - like Chloe Hope’s Death and Birds. It’s reassuringly what its title suggests: weekly posts about death and birds. Where else on the internet would this startling piece of writing enjoy thousands of readers every week?
It’s taken me about a year to figure out what writing fits Substack. Or rather, where the Venn diagram of Substack and I meet. Something unexpected happened in June 2023, when I wrote ‘The Queensland Problem’ and went momentarily bat shit. (I’ll write a one-year update for that post next month.) I only really feel like I found it in the last couple of months, with posts like the intimacy shoot, the cis white guy post, or the conversation about my children and their infant spirituality.
It comes down to what one of my subscribers was kind enough to call ‘radical authenticity’. That’s both a compliment and a challenge. Most weeks, I am a little afraid of what I’m about to write. And that fear has been the best indicator that I’m onto something.
Substack bothers you a lot about becoming a paid subscriber if you’re a free subscriber. It’s a great way to help, and I’ve made the cost as small as possible. But there are also other ways to help if being a paid subscriber isn’t an option for you.
Sharing posts makes a huge difference to my numbers, sometimes in ways that you wouldn’t expect. I’m not kidding - just one word of recommendation on your social media, and I end up with a 10% bump that week. Thank you to those that have shared in the past.
Commenting and liking the post agrees with Substack’s algorithm, making me easier to discover on the platform itself. Plenty of you send me DM’s or e-mails responding to posts, which is excellent and I love it. But if you ever feel comfortable sharing your responses publicly, please feel free to comment - it makes a difference.
You can also refer a friend (button below), which could net you a compensated subscription.
You can also gift a subscription if you’re feeling generous, button also below.
Thank you again for a tremendous year. As I slowly exit longer-form writing, the routine I’ve found here and the conversations and connections have been wonderful. Thank you for reading. Here’s to another year.
Love,
Dave
Dave, funny you mention male role models. You might still be looking for yours. But I’m sure some of your readers have found one in you. I know I have. Thank you.