Hi,
It’s me again. It’s been a while.
Since I last published, some interesting things have happened: I quit my remote job, took up an in-office job in a completely different industry (fintech to ad-tech, B2C to B2B), traveled to Bali for a month - more on that in my next piece, and also moved to a whole new city. Phew.
On the other hand, the internet world kept doing its thing. Substack launched Notes - which I’m kicked about - and Foster, the burgeoning community of talented writers I joined a couple months ago, is set to launch their next program for creators called The Artisan’s Way.
Through all of my life changes, I’ve been thinking about the events, people, and signposts of the world that keep me going. This piece is specifically about event(s) that kept me going with respect to my writing. My next piece is more about what kept me going (and continues to do so) in the sea of life-changes that adulthood brings.
If you’re a person on the internet interested in the pursuit of your most creative self, read on.
Beginning is hard; continuing, a whole battle in itself
There is such loud song and dance about events that enable us to start something. But there isn’t enough applause for those that enable us to continue. Isn’t something that keeps us going arguably better than something that inspired us to begin?
My journey with writing has been an interesting one. The written word has always been my favourite form of sharing and consuming ideas. I’ve never had all the answers - I was always the kid that asked a lot of questions. Naturally, that continued into my adulthood, and as I grew older, the complexity of my questions grew with me. So I did the thing any person obsessed with the written word would: I started a newsletter to search for answers to my complex questions about the human experience. It was amazing. I now had a platform and an audience, and a writing practice! Despite how hard it all was, I genuinely enjoyed the process. This went well for about six months.
Then, something changed. I became preoccupied with the writing technique. The value of my writing was pegged against the movement of the vanity metrics: number of subscribers, likes, shares, views, comments,.. In true marketer fashion, I turned my writing into a technical experiment that was aimed at optimising for a higher number. I pushed myself to write in a style that emulated my ‘best performing’ piece(s), and convinced myself that I could only create good work if I stuck to the rules. To be fair, that’s what my knowledge of marketing told me: experiment, capture what works, optimise for improvement on KPIs, repeat.
Naturally, I began to hate everything I wrote, and this ironically further pushed me to dwell on the metrics. “I’m not very excited about this piece but hey, over 500 people have read it, a whole bunch of people have reached out to tell me which parts they liked, so it must be good.”
Continuing to write felt herculean, to say the least. My heart wasn’t in it anymore. The tension between my logical, adult brain and the creative inner-child was loud.
A creative crisis is also a life crisis (and vice-versa)
As I write this piece, I’m realising that my experience with writing is not far from our lived human experience. We present ourselves to the world in its rules. If we receive enough validation, we tell ourselves, “Well, yeah, okay, people think I’m good at playing this status game, and winning makes me happy, so by extension this game is ‘my thing’.”
Becoming good at x = winning = joy
Therefore, x = joy
When in fact, it’s just that winning = joy
More often than not, we never try to find out whether we even like x because we’re high from the small & large wins. When we stop winning from x, the real crisis sets in. Because what did we have, other than our very logical, very-adult ‘metrics’ that brought us momentary joy?
Consequently, we find ourselves in the midst of quarter-mid-or whatever milestone-crises. My theory is that a life-crisis such as the proverbial quarter-life-crisis I told myself I was having comes around once every couple of years when the inner-child is done with the bullshit our adult selves have put it through. The inner-child’s frustration manifests itself as the adult self’s doubts: what have I achieved? Am I good at anything? Should I be doing the x thing others around me are doing? If I don’t, does that make me a failure?
Interestingly, the inner-child had the answers all along: the only person I have to worry about disappointing, is me. You see? The inner-child pushes us to stop and look around, reevaluate, when it already has had the answers all along (sneaky!).
My adult self was having the same crisis as my creative self: we couldn’t do x anymore. We didn’t want to win. We didn’t want the numbers.
I often think about Julie Powell, who wrote her blog into a void, for an audience of a couple readers occasionally, if at all. To then have her memoir be turned into a feature film which cast MERYL STREEP. The point being that she kept going. And she did it because she couldn’t not.
Creativity tends to have a gravitational pull - our job is to make space for it. Winning is an abstract concept. Very-adult numbers should be kept away from the inner-child’s creative pursuits.
Enter: Foster’s 5 week program called the Art of Modern Writing.
What Foster is an is not
Foster is, simply put, a collective of writers who are ‘Highly trained at storytelling sorcery [and] are passionate about helping independent online writers. [They have] helped craft thousands of drafts, from vulnerable personal essays to short stories, viral Twitter threads, and more.’
Foster’s Art of Modern Writing was a non-fellowship. It was not a bunch of sessions about why I should write on the internet. It was not a series of calls that tried to sell me a version of the internet where ‘you too can be popular with 100,000 subscribers and then earn money from writing.’ It was not a program which preached consistency in publishing, pushing me to publish everyday, every week, or every month.
Foster’s Art of Modern Writing was two things: first, a community of authentic writers who are creative, raw, and deeply talented. Second, a program that handed me the right questions about myself and my writing.
This program pushed me to be raw, vulnerable, and real with myself and my writing. The first two weeks aimed at ‘Cultivating Courage and Authenticity Online,’ did more for my writing (its continuation) than any other writers’ program has before. Most writing programs I have been a part of have felt like a reiteration of the same advice in different ways. They solve for consistency and writing logistics instead of actual creativity. Foster’s Art of Modern Writing pushed me to confront the things that stood in the way of my most creative self.
Finally, while the sessions and the community experience were great by themselves, the thing that stole the show for me was the editing support from Foster’s highly talented community of editors.
Imagine having a large gathering of experts come together to discuss every piece you write.
Scary at first, but honestly how can you not come out on the other end a more evolved writer?
Trying to not disappoint myself
I’m honing the creativity of my inner-child and leaving the logical adult-brain for my day job. I’m beginning to write (and also make life choices) with a single big guiding principle: to never do a thing that would end up disappointing me. Regardless of the chances of success, failure, humiliation, or praise,.. the goal is to stay true to myself.
Foster’s program - unlike most others - didn’t try to push me to write despite myself. It pushed me to write for myself.
P.S. The Artisan’s Way is the next season in Foster’s series of programs for creators and writers, starting May 30th. Feel free to reach out to me if you’re interested and have questions, or are looking for discounts on the program.
P.P.S. If you appreciated the pun in the subheading, we are now friends. 🤝
Thank you, Chirs, Daniel, Mark, Amber, Ian, John, Nick, Cams, Kavir, Joshua, & Anthony from the Foster team for editorial help on this piece.
#11 The art of continuing
Hi Yashmi, I found your newsletter while researching The Artisan's Way, I'm thinking about applying and it was fantastic to read about your experience. Thank you for sharing and keeping going with your writing. I just subscribed and am excited to read more of what you like writing. :)
Those people who get into something to "produce content" rarely stick with it, but those produce content of things they enjoy, often do. I think that is more or less what you are hitting on here.
Same goes for writing. I know my content will never have broad appeal and have no intention to monetize it, I do it because I enjoy it.