At Least It's Not AI...

A Monday morning hello.

Did you happen to read my list of 75 Things I Learned From Running My Substack?

It came about because I’d just published my 100th interview (with Miki Berenyi) and I was reflecting on how far I’d come. So I pulled together a list of all the things I’d learned from all the folks I’d talked to. Then I did my usual routine—read it, read it again, formatted it in Substack, added URLs, sent myself an emailed copy, read it again, checked all the links to ensure everything worked—and once I was satisfied that it was pretty and perfect and ready to be shared with the world, I scheduled it to be sent to you, Gorgeous Reader.

Then I went on with my life and didn’t look at it again.

Until yesterday.

Imagine my surprise when I opened up the list and saw this.

What the hell?

I have ZERO memory of adding that “and if you’re not landing” line. It’s not on the draft copy that I emailed to myself, so I must have gone into Substack between proofing it and scheduling it, decided I had something else important to say, added a line and then got halfway through and gave up. Maybe I was distracted by something shiny. Probably my phone.

Anyway, I have literally no idea where that #15 was going. My apologies to anyone who got that far. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m just a one-woman show over here trying to keep it all together, and sometimes things fall through the cracks. Like the second half of sentences.

On the upside, at least you know for sure that AI isn’t involved in any aspect of this publication. It’s just all me, making all the mistakes.

Anyway, if you look at the list online now, it’s actually 75 things and not 75 1/2 things with that one half-finished line.

I hope you enjoyed reading it, and I also hope you enjoyed my chats with Miki Berenyi and Nora Kirkpatrick. I really appreciated all that Miki had to say about the state of the industry today. The more I talk to people like her who have been maintaining an artistic career for decades, the more I learn how difficult it’s getting for people to continue to work in any area of entertainment. It’s depressing, but I’m grateful to those who, like Miki, hang in there and continue to make art. (Even if they have to juggle day jobs to do it.)

Later this week I’ll publish my interview with Caroline Bicks, the Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at the University of Maine. Thanks to her role, she became the first scholar to have full access to Stephen King’s archives, and she used a yearlong sabbatical to research his five earliest works. She shared all that she learned in Monsters in the Archive, a really fun read that’s part memoir, part master class. As a Stephen King fan, it was fun to chat with her about his work and its impact on her life.

That’s it for now! Have a wonderfully creative week!

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