After watching the inexorable march of Substack towards the same commercially driven hellscape as countless platforms before it, I’ve been scouting around for alternatives.
Once I started looking, I quickly discovered a quiet exodus of similarly minded writers going on right under my nose. A small army of similarly fed up writers in search of somewhere less obviously commercial to land their words and stories.
The consensus seemed to centre around a collection of known quantities - Wordpress, Tumblr, and Ghost - so I started tinkering to see how difficult it might be to join the exodus.
Don’t get me wrong - Substack is very good at what it does - offering an easy means to sending out an email newsletter, and a straightforward way to monetise it - which is wonderful if you have a newsletter filled with marketable content.
A personal blog - a diary, or journal - isn’t really marketable - no matter how you spin it. Sure, during the height of the blogging boom in the late 2000s we saw the likes of Belle de Jour, Dooce, and Petite Anglaise get book and TV deals - but they didn’t sell their original blogs. The wonderful thing about blogs was always their accessibility and availability.
On a side-note, I was stunned to read recently that Belle de Jour (the basis for the TV show starring Billie Piper) may not have actually happened. I’m guessing in the excitement of discovering years ago that a research scientist was operating as a sex worker on the side and writing a tell-all blog about her adventures, nobody bothered to find out if her journaled adventures were actually true - there was probably too much money to be made furthering the story and reporting it. Eyeballs. Clicks. Traffic.
So.
For the moment, I am cross-posting to Substack, Wordpress, and Tumblr. Ghost will happen soon enough too - giving those that want to read a selection of places they might find my words. It’s then up to each reader to choose the place that best fits their preferences in terms of subscribing, following, or whatever it is you might do at each place.
Here’s where the words will live:
◦ Substack - https://recursivewords.substack.com
◦ Wordpress - https://recursivewords.blog
◦ Tumblr - https://recursive-words.tumblr.com
◦ Ghost - watch this space
Once Ghost is up and running - a properly independent blog, not running on somebody else’s platform - I’ll migrate the existing email subscriptions over - until them, feel free to go explore. I’m not going all-in with Wordpress, because I suspect Automattic’s court fight with WP Engine could end up destroying them. We’ll see.
In a few months time I’ll share the experience of each space. It will be interesting to find out how readers at the different platforms interact - how discovery happens - how connections happen.
In the meantime, I’ll just try to keep writing. Keep sharing.
I’ve also been experimenting recently with a wonderful app called “Day One” - that has encouraged me to write more often, even if I don’t share everything I record within it. I’m using it right now - writing this. It’s been a good experience so far - encouraging me to empty my head - to unburden myself of at least a little of the crazy load.
If you’ve not heard of it, perhaps go take a look.