a lil newsletter milestone

A few more and I'll reach the promised land

This newsletter now has 200 readers! Well, nearly: my behind-the-curtain stats clock the subscriber count at 199, currently. But I’m choosing to be optimistic here, with the hope that I’ll snag that 200th subscriber by the end of the day. ¹

That number is smaller than some, bigger than others. Comparisons are immaterial. though. It feels significant to me, and that has everything to do with the kind of writer I think I am. I love broadly generalized binaries, so let’s engage in one now, shall we?

There are, I think two types of writers: conversational, and experiential.

Conversational writers are just that: writing, for them, is a communicative act between the writer and the reader, however many of them there may be. Sometimes that communication is more metaphorical, as in a book or an article. Other times, though, it is literal, as in the comments that got exchanged on these newsletters, and on the Substack platform as a whole. Posts, comments, restacks—the whole bit.

Experiential writers are a bit more removed. Writing is not, primarily, a means for communication. Rather, it is a means of creating an experience, in the form of a book or essay or what have you, that the reader can go through on their own, long after the author of said experience has moved on.

I am the latter type of writer—an experiential one. I am trying to create, at different scales, experiences for readers to go through, and hopefully come out the other side with their contents jostled, just a bit. This is my talent, I’ve learned, and I’m glad for it. But it does mean that I am not as, well, conversational as other writers, which sometimes leads me to wonder if any readers at all are going through the experiences I try to put together.

So it’s very encouraging to know that 200 readerly minds, dispersed across the vast wilds of the internet, are out there experientializing my work. I’m grateful! Immensely so! I hope to bring grander, more expansive experiences in the future, but in the meantime, I’ll keep popping up in your inboxes on a regular basis with some mouthy dispatch on some book I loved and/or hated.

Onward, experiencers!

1. Subscriber no. 200 actually signed up while I was writing this! How’s that for manifesting?