On Writing Consistently

Behind the curtain at Mightier Acorns

At the risk of sounding pleased with myself, I wanted to share some of the habits and organization that go into this newsletter. Folks new to writing often start a project like this only to tire of the constant deadlines. They may feel like they’ve run out of things to say after only a few posts. Making certain strategic choices early on will help avoid that kind of exhaustion.

This Substack newsletter is only about half a year old at this writing, but I have been doing some sort of weekly writing since the early 2000s - much of it related to family history. This is how I tackle the big project:

Set the Tone

The hardest part of any creative activity is facing the blank page.

If you hope to produce something with any regularity, you need to figure out how to inspire yourself to fill that page on a schedule. I am writing about two things: Genealogy and Family History. They are related¹, of course, but they are different disciplines, and most of my posts draw their narrative from fusing the two.

Either of my chosen topics can get super-dry if I approach them academically. Simply writing out lists of ancestors or reciting names, dates, and places isn’t fun for the writer or the reader. (Besides that, WikiTree or FamilySearch are better platforms for building an online tree.) But whether you are new to this or have been doing it for years, something grabbed you about the research and excites you enough to keep digging. Whatever that something is, use that as your starting point for generating story ideas.

Any time you hear yourself muttering, “Well that’s interesting!” you’ve got a story idea. Write it down.

Map Your Route

Once you have ideas, they need a framework and a schedule.

I decided when I started that I wanted this newsletter to be primarily a genealogy project. Everyone I write about is related to me in some way, and the individual posts are organized around that - talking about how we are related, discussing the evidence that shows the relationships, my research and analysis methods, and the resulting family histories that come out of that research are all up for discussion.

I also decided that I could handle publishing two posts a week and that the individual posts should aim for a 500 to 1,000-word limit. (For me, it is hard to stay under 1,000 words in any context. Ask my former supervisors.)

Those decisions gave me some “rules” for structuring my calendar.

• Try to balance my subjects by not writing about the same “side” of the family twice in a row.

• Serialize big ideas - this will help with “giving myself space” and spreading out the amount of work necessary in a given week.

• Try to balance between “biographical” stories and “research drama” stories - sometimes they blend well, but when they are distinct, spread them out.

Give Yourself Space

For Mightier Acorns, I use my drafts as my “idea list” - currently, there are 24 “drafts” in various stages of composition sitting in my queue. I also have the next 7 posts scheduled - which gives the anxiety monster and the procrastinator inside me enough space to work on the 24 drafts and begin putting them on the schedule.

When I launched this newsletter, I took advantage of some of the better pieces from my “back catalog” at my previous blogs, cleaned them up a little bit, and put them into that drafts folder. If you don’t have a back catalog, consider holding off on launching your project until you have 3 to 6 weeks’ worth of posts polished and ready to schedule.

As of Christmas, I had finished posts scheduled through the beginning of March. Nine of my 50 posts have been recycled favorites, and the first 16 Family Reunion posts were easy to pull together. Serializing what began as an idea for a very large single essay, “Climbing the Ladder to Providence,” gave me 11 posts in total, which bought me more than 13 weeks in which to research, compose, and edit - while maintaining my two-post-a-week pace. (If you subscribe now, you’ll get the 11th and final post in your inbox on Friday!)

The point is to avoid having nothing for your readers to read while also not stressing yourself out or scrambling to put something/anything together at the last minute. A healthy buffer will keep this labor of love from becoming a burden.

Editors Are Your Friends

If you have a partner you trust who wants to read your drafts and help with copy-editing, let them help.

If you don’t have an editor, take some time each week to read the posts you have scheduled with a critical eye. Regular readers may cock an eyebrow and say, “But, your posts are riddled with errors and awkward wording.” And that’s because I do my best, but mistakes are inevitable. I use Grammarly’s free service to catch big errors, and I spend an hour or so each Sunday going over the two posts in the queue for that week - but I’m only human.

But if you have someone else to review your work, be open to their feedback. They will tell you to change things you might not want to change - and it is up to you to find the balance between having enough humility to see things their way and enough confidence to fight for what is important to you.

No matter what, strive to be gracious when someone is kind enough to offer help.

Yeah, So…

In yoga practice, you are told, “Set your intention for your practice.” I like the explanation “…intention is usually recognised as the practice of bringing awareness to a quality or virtue you’d like to cultivate for yourself.”

During yoga, you stretch muscles and connective tissue to release tension and improve your flexibility. In your writing, you stretch your mind and seek to connect with your readers - hopefully expanding what they know. Both take effort and discipline but also require patience and forgiveness.

If you set reasonable limits, give yourself room to let artificial deadlines slip, and establish a loose plan with the freedom to generate new ideas, you should be able to look back after a few months and realize, “Wow - I did a lot of work, a little at a time.”

Look at that. 1,069 words. Nice.

1. pun intended