Why I Quit Substack After Only One Week

It’s time to get back to basics.

As a person who has some issues with her mental health, I don’t always finish what I start. I’ve changed jobs about a hundred times, been married three times, and have bought approximately 35 writing journals that I never touched once. It’s actually incredible that I’m still writing stories after starting three years ago. I’m grateful that’s where my passion lies. I have always been drawn to writing and never want to stop.

With hope for more money in my checking account, I started Substack last week. For those who don’t know, it’s an email newsletter where people subscribe and get a writer’s exclusive content. I read every article about the platform before I tried it, and pretty soon I had a battle plan for how to get started. I personalized my welcome page and wrote a profile. I put cute banners and pictures that would appear at the top of the newsletter. The articles had suggested writing something every day or at least three to five times a week, so I plotted all the stories I would write.

I hated every single minute of it.

Don’t get me wrong. Substack has a great platform for writers. I’m sure there are people who do very well and make lots of money. It’s easy to set up, and I have no real complaints at all. My problem wasn’t with Substack. The problem was me.

Trying to promote myself online has always been like putting a square peg in a round hole. It often makes me feel bad about myself. I wrote an entire book two years ago, but when the time came to promote it, I was awkward and nervous. I can write 400 pages of a story, but if you ask me to write a blurb about myself, I will obsess for days and then offer some clunky paragraph that looks like a high school essay.

It just felt wrong for me to send people an email every day and bother them simply to promote myself. I love it when people comment or message me about one of my stories and say it helped them. To me, that’s the oyster with the pearl in it. My stories are usually pretty personal, and I have shared a lot about myself over the years. I’m happy to share if it will help somebody who has been in a similar situation.

The whole “look at me” mentality of email newsletters just doesn’t sit right with my heart…

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