💬 Community Chat: Your Why's in Writing

Weigh in! If you don't write on Substack, share with me in another way!

Photo by "My Life Through A Lens" on Unsplash

I originally wrote this post on Substack’s Notes features, but considering I’m lacking in the writing, and instead, I want to use this e-mail to chat about our “whys”!

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I’m curious what you get out of writing on Substack! As I navigate writing, I think it’s important to explore what we’re using these platforms for and act critically about what we’re using.

What’s your favourite part of writing here? Why did you choose to write on Substack instead of somewhere else?

I’ll go first:

1) Freedom to write whatever the heck I want to write, whenever I want to write it. No one’s stopping me

2) Community and camaraderie building. I’ve been exposed to so many wonderful writers on here that I’ve been wanting to share. This includes helping community build for Asian Writers Collective (Thanks to fellow writers Tiffany Chu & bakhtawar for holding down the fort) but also for other Substack directories! Like QStack (Mr. Troy Ford) and SmallStack (Robin Taylor (he/him))

3) Advice, learning and reading works from writers I admire! I love Esmé Weijun Wang, Alexander Chee, Meghan O'Rourke, Jeannine Ouellette and Jeanna Kadlec’s substacks. All are writers I read outside of here, but their breadth of work on Substack supplements the literary canon.

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If you don’t write on Substack…

What have you been enjoying reading? If you don’t write, what are you reading and why do you like reading?

I’ll be back soon with my essays/active writing. I’m currently dealing with health issues, a couple deadlines for speaking gigs and such— but a question I also have for you all:

What do you want to see more of from me? Let’s chat! What have you found interesting of mine and what do you want to see more of? What topics have you enjoyed seeing me write about?