All of my favorite writers have substacks. Their emails are my favorite ones to read and my favorite ones to keep. When I get the inbox notification that Holly Whitaker or Roxanne Gay or Marlee Grace has emailed me, the dopamine hit is extra strong. It feels intimate: these people are sending thoughts to my personal email, yet it also feels like a really beautiful connective tissue stringing us together. These substacks create a community of kindred spirits, ones who are also interested in emotions and language and nuance and metaphor (If you know me, you know that I speak just as much in metaphor as anything else).
So I’m here. My desire to emulate these writers coupled with my desire to write more has brought me here, to A Penny For My Thoughts. This substack has a friend: a blog of the same name. The blog features a variety of my work: from critical writing to photography to poetry. I envision my work here as more of the casual type, where I get to exercise the muscle of typing keys in sequential order. Writing feels a lot different when put like that, huh?!
Regardless, this is the space where I get to take my writing more seriously. An active choice. I haven’t taken my writing seriously in the past. Even telling people I’m writing a book stings with a high dose of self-cringe. If I don’t take my craft seriously, how can I expect anyone else to? And staring graduation in the face certainly heightens the gravity of writing for me.
Thanks for joining me in Earth’s gravitational pull.
Good company.