[DIGEST] Wanna hear something wild?

Hi friends,

Wanna hear something wild?

Nobody who meets you after today will know any of the dumb stuff you did before today. They will read your bio, accept the good things, not check the stuff you regret, and experience your brand as if you knew what you were doing all along.

I have been a USA Today bestselling author for years. It only happened once, and not one person has commented on it, nor the anthology I was part of that got it, for years.

I just finished redesigning series covers that had needed a refresh for years. Nobody will ever check to see the old covers.

Everyone who experiences you after this moment will enter with a clean slate…

…and there are WAY more people who have never experienced you than those who have. I have met thousands of fans around the country, and every time I do I meet 100x more people who have never known me than those who have.

I’ve spent a decade doing this work at a high level and still 99.9% of the people I’ll ever meet are in front of me.

If you want to share how you are doing this week, then there are two ways to interact with this post.

1 - If you don’t want to say anything, or bristle at identifying yourself, then you can reply with this nifty poll.

2 - If you’re feeling very brave, then reply below and tell us how you are doing right now on a scale from 1-5.

WHAT WE WROTE ON SUBSTACK: This was another business week. In our first collaboration post, I worked with of to analyze the Kickstarter publishing category across seven metrics. 

Plus, answers the need to tell your story and builds a brand from the ground up.

A new chapter of Magic also dropped this week.

All chapters of The Godsverse Chronicles are now free for all subscribers. You can read the whole series from the beginning right here.

You still only get access to a bunch of free books and stories from my back catalog by becoming a paid member. You can start your membership with a 7-day free trial.

UPCOMING ARTICLE: Next week I’m going to do a big thing and give you a step-by-step tutorial on how to build a beautiful one-page author website. It’s exhaustive and exhausting. Two of the best words to use when hyping a story it took you forever to write and would like to be read widely.

ROUNDUP: Here are some of my favorite articles of the week.

Business-y:

• is not sorry that self-promotion doesn’t work while they defend gimmicks, owns the control point, and hijacks the Super Bowl(‘s ads)

• pairs their network self with a Gantt chart, dissects lessons learned from three world-class founders with ex-employee Sanchan Saxena, and guts chickens.

• sees the opportunity in vertical AI, and get serious about wage theft, and reviews the state of B2B contracts.

• offers a super unique way to earn a living from your favorite vacation spot, needs TikTok to know it needs Taylor Swift more than she needs them, and isn’t afraid to hit the follow button.

• examines the mind-boggling reach of Super Bowl ads, puts the brakes on efficiency, and never told you it would be easy.

• reflects on the month their whole life exploded, is drained from maintaining social capital online, and fails the “Quantumania test”.

Publishing-like:

• reads more “just okay” books, identifies a euphemism for “non-white” and “non-hetero, and becomes a monster-in-residence.

• invites you to unsubscribe, still likes you even though they unsubscribed, and doesn’t fear a creative path.

• knows that The Messenger was doomed, but that it brought the Grid down with it, believes public funding is the only way to save journalism, and charts the declining role of traditional intermediaries.

• defines enough, exposes the double exposure effect, and pushes through Substack stage fright.

• fails to realize their new offering didn’t look good on paper, is horrified by self-promotion, and dissects David Milch’s disembodied writing process.

• writes like a rich, white man, learns about writing by learning to do a pullup, and offers a cynical (but concrete) guide for Substack noobs.

• survives Substack overwhelm, hits peak newsletter, and grows their readership at a glacial pace.

• weaves a story loom, shows how to write a good description for your Substack, and can’t use Substack to escape social media.

• writes curved characters, starts a “blog” on Substack, and thanks you for coming to his “whorehouse”.

Culture-ish:

• falls into the trap of digital motherhood, wants diversity in her “village”, and fights the urge to walk away from their whole life.

• finds it easier to love their mother now that they are dead, compares diet cycles to shopping bans, and gets back to the roots of coffee.

• visits bomb city, goes back in time to find the thing that broke inside them, and directs their perfect death.

• keeps negativity at bay, makes “bad decisions” according to other people’s morality but not their own, and remembers being a child in a child’s body dealing with stuff way beyond her grasp.

• isn’t bothered that Tracy Chapman can’t be bothered to show up unless she wants to, follows expert advice for a year to make new friends, is obsessed with Sofia Coppola’s obsession with beautiful young women trapped by austere beauty.

• doesn’t understand how you don’t understand what makes you happy, embodies gentle power, and falls into the positivity trap.

• didn’t read that “article”, they saw it on Tiktok, sets off on a year of bragging, and has nothing so they set themselves on fire.

• photographs their first NFL game, envisions the meaning crisis brought on by Apple Vision, and has lost the ability to see reality.

• puzzles over creating community as an adult, tests nicotine patches to fight long COVID, and celebrates Joni Mitchell’s cat lady vibes.

Find anything you loved enough to swoon over or hated enough to make your blood boil? Let me know.

If you like what I’m doing around here and want to check out the archives, you can do that with a 7-day free trial, or simply go straight to being a paid subscriber. You also get access to my non-fiction book, How to Build Your Creative Career.

How long have you been trying to build your career? How many hours have you spent banging your head against a wall? How much money have you sunk into ads and marketing that just don’t work?

Now, what if you had a blueprint that could show you all the elements you need to build a creative career without feeling gross about it. How much would that be worth to you?

This book can’t guarantee you a successful career, but it can give you all the fundamental knowledge you need to set you up for success because it was written by a creative for a creative.

Paid members can access the entire archive of this series from the beginning, along with other series and every article I’ve ever written.

If you are not a paid member, you can read everything with a 7-day free trial, or give us a one-time tip.