Embracing opportunity

Change is good...

I confess that the last couple of days have been highly energising. I am the kind of individual who embraces certain types of change, who loves new writing-related projects, who appreciates a challenge. My moving into Substack represents all three of those things.

Historically, having spent so much of my time - years! - generating collateral yet simultaneously finding it difficult to find effective ways to share it, exploring whether this platform might help bring my work to a wider audience was only logical. Thus, I have been shaping and curating content (and thinking about it when I should have been sleeping!) in order to get off to a good start.

Of course it is far too early to make any assessment on effectiveness. What is a reasonable gestation period? After how long can you truly stand back and take an effective measure? I suspect at least six months, if not a year. And what format works best, both in terms of how the content is presented and its composition?

I am hoping that, where possible, a ‘mixed media’ approach - combining the written word with those words read aloud - may prove popular. Indeed, my podcast episodes (now fed here automatically) have garnered more ‘listens’ in the last few days than they did in the previous couple of months.

It seems clear to me that my writing - my output, the ‘collateral’ I already have at my disposal - has not been earning its keep in both tangible and metaphorical senses! Hopefully I have now settled on a programme which will allow me to surface that material at the same time as working on new projects and exposing new work.

Writers need readers. And writers need to find the mediums for their work where those readers are. My website worked to a degree and I’m grateful to my followers there for their support - whereas Twitter most certainly did not!

I keep my fingers crossed for this venture - and fervently hope that you will join me on my journey.