Luca Rossi, author of the brilliant Refactoring newsletter, sent me some good advice this week: write about what is in your comfort zone. Why? Because it’s the only way to ensure you can write every week.
I’ve failed to write every week this year. I had quite a good January, turning in four posts, but since then I’ve done well to submit a post a month. This is probably because I want to bring you everything I’m learning at the frontiers of my understanding of topics we discuss on Walk the Pod. And that means nothing I want to write is in my comfort zone. And that means, I am giving myself an impossible task, and hence it’s not been possible to send you a letter, every week.
Some of my favourite newsletters are tightly organised, with bullet pointed lists, headings, and links to comprehensive guides the authors have already published. It’s daunting, trying to create in a space full of experts. But I have to remind myself, you’ve always come along for the ramblechat. Nobody has ever asked me for A+ performance. You’re interested, I think, in what a solid B effort, and would prefer to know you’ll get something every week, rather than sporadically.
So, dear friends, I am taking my own advice: that it is not about getting it right every time, but the things we return to over and over again that define our creative lives. I’m returning to Substack to try to improve my consistency. Let’s see if I can get back to turning out a newsletter post, blog post, or whatever you want to call it, once a week.
I hope that some of what I’ve learned from putting the podcast together for the last nearly four years demonstrates that the consistency has been there for podcast episodes, if not newsletter posts. And that if I apply the same principles, I can do better here too!
Perfectionism is the enemy of consistency. Substack offers a podcast feature, where I can record this newsletter for you as well as typing it. Knowing that I can, and should do this, means that I am even less likely to put finger to keyboard, knowing that I should also put lips to microphone directly afterwards. The tasks seems bigger, and somehow harder to do, the bigger it can be.
So I won’t be recording this newsletter as a podcast episode. At least, not until I am regularly turning in a newsletter post a week.
Since I started Walk the Pod in November 2020, I’ve known that consistency would be key for this project. I wanted to create something that was reasonably easy to make. I wanted it to be something I could make in a half hour stroll around my nearest park. I wanted to build an audience for the things I want to say to the world. Thank you for being early adopters!
When Spotify for Podcasters created a way to make a Music + Talk show in 2020, I knew that I could do something with this tech. When they announced they would be removing mobile recording earlier this year, I was furious! I had built the entire show around their mobile recording studio. How was I going to continue making it without it?
So the next phase of the project was to move it onto technology that wouldn’t be removed with six months’ notice. I switched from Spotify to Podbean and an app called Backpack, and I think I’ve got them sorted out so that I can make the show I want to make.
And for those missing the podcast, I haven’t stopped making Walk the Pod. I’m taking a break to finish the second year of a three year part time MSc in Science Communication and Public Engagement with the University of Edinburgh. As soon as my final assignment of the year is in I will be making Series 48 of Walk the Pod to celebrate. The new series starts on Monday 8 July.
I’ve loved making Walk the Pod consistently. I feel like this newsletter can evolve as we go along, to become more worthy of your time reading it, more complementary to the podcast episodes, just generally better.
Sometimes, it will be a stream of consciousness. Because a stream of consciousness is what I can write consistently. And I hope you’ll come along with me for the ride, until we work out exactly what this newsletter is going to be.
R x
Walk the Pod Loves 🧡
Idea 10 by Gibran Alcocer
The Split by Abi Morgan
What are you writing/listening to/watching at the moment? Drop me a comment!