She's starting a sub-stack now...
She’s starting a sub-stack now…
How to begin. ‘I hope this sub-stack finds you well’. Writing an eloquent email is hard enough. The advice I give to my young students afraid of the blank page and the blinking cursor is to open with a technique. A simile is usually good. Starting a sub-stack is like the feeling of a caterpillar emerging from a chrysalis (cliche). Starting a sub-stack is both terrifying and liberating like being naked in public (cliche and hyperbolic). At this point I realise how hard my students have it.
Other advice is to steal. (This is from T.S. Eliot in The Sacred Wood and from Austin Kleon here.)
Thus here is a pilfered thought from the brilliant Katherine Mansfield: ‘I was always writing. Twaddle it was, too. But better far, write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.’
So here we go, if you would like to subscribe to this newsletter of writing then please click the purple button that reads ‘subscribe now’. (It’s at the top and at the bottom of the page!) This means you will receive whatever I write direct into your inbox. You can also read it all online here. Here’s my ‘About’ page for a flavour of what these writings will include, my aim is for it to be beyond ‘twaddle’ and I will be posting fortnightly. You may comment below and you can also share away on all the usual wicked platforms. That would be much appreciated.
Thank you for reading.
Best wishes, Kind Regards, Take Care,
Emma (Silverthorn)
P.S. the picture is of me pretending to write in a fancy New York hotel many, many years ago.