First of all, thank you
A revelation + a new chapter
If you’re new, hi hello, thank you for being here. If you’re one of the seven people who followed this newsletter from the very beginning, thank you. And to anyone in between – thank you. I can’t describe how much it makes my day every time one of you reaches out to tell me you loved a book I recommended or the podcast I’ve been listening to is exactly what you needed at the moment or you’re now also obsessed with that TV show.
I’ve taken some time away to rethink this newsletter and where it fits in my creative life. I wasn’t completely certain what People Who Like Things was when it began, and it’s evolved several times in the last two years. I started with the idea of writing something in the tastemaker space. My goal was to sift through the endless sea of content around us and find what I thought was worth sharing with you. I didn’t expect to open up about my struggle to rekindle my creativity, rant about toxic capitalism and work culture, and go into detail about my self-care routine.
I’ve loved writing this newsletter, and I’ve appreciated your patience as it’s gone through several iterations and down many rabbit holes. But I’ve realized that if I want to keep writing this newsletter while avoiding burnout, I need to make People Who Like Things one facet of a more holistic creative life, instead of what I’ve been doing – that is, pursuing each creative project as if it were a separate entity.
I’ve also finally realized what this newsletter is at its core: a space for people who love stories. Whether you love creating them as an artist or experiencing them as a reader/viewer or both, you’re here because you seek powerful, funny, thoughtful, entertaining, life-changing stories that capture something vital about the human experience.
My plan for this new chapter is to send you two newsletters a month that will always be free. Newsletter 1 will focus on creating stories, and Newsletter 2 will have recommendations for the stories I love right now. (I’m excited about my plans for subscriber-only content, but we’ll talk more about that in future newsletters.)
If you’ve been following this newsletter for a while, you’ve heard me allude to “writing projects” without a lot of specifics. I’ve wanted to talk more about my creative process for writing fiction for a long time, holding back because my writing process requires privacy.
Part of my revelation about the future of this newsletter was the realization that I can be both transparent about my process and private about the work itself. I’ll be opening up about where I get ideas and how I turn those ideas into stories. I’ll talk about what it was like to write my first novel manuscript. Eventually, I’ll share what I learn as I venture further down the long road to publication.
Newsletter 1 each month, focusing on creating stories, will be especially geared toward you artists, writers, creators.
Newsletter 2 and its story recommendations will mostly be quick book recs, fueled by my reading life and designed to complement upcoming episodes of my reading podcast, Reading Like an Adult.
If you’re not here for the creative process and book recommendations, then please, please feel free to unsubscribe. No hard feelings, promise. I’ve loved recommending movies and TV shows to you (and I know some of those recs will be here from time to time) but my reading life has become the thing I’m sneaking around to do, and it’s time for me to trust that creative instinct.
That being said … I’d love it if you stuck around. In my next newsletter, I’m excited and a little terrified to share something I’ve never written about before: my personal creative process to write a story.
Thank you, again, for the last two years, and I’ll see you around the inbox very soon.