The funny thing about ADHD awareness month is that ...

Overwhelmed, moi?

Lovely readers.

I missed you last week!

But skipping a week has made me realise something; I’ve slipped into spreading myself too thinly again.

I’m not going to list everything here, because I’m sure we all have our own versions. What I will say is that recognising it and being able to do something about it is a privilege that not everyone has.

At first, I thought, lets just do fortnightly letters, as in alternate weeks, rather than every Wednesday. Would that solve the issue for me? Would reducing my output here by half, reduce my overwhelm by half?

I’m not sure it would.

In ye olde days of this letter, before moving to Substack, I would write once a month. It’d be quite a bit longer and would include links to pieces I might have written over on my blog. But this space has been a weird hybrid of blog and mailing list for the past year or so. I’ve entered a transition phase and not really realised it. Moving myself forward through instinct and gut feeling. Part of this process is closing down my Wordpress site and moving over to Shopify. This is pretty big as I’ve been writing online since 2010, its a lot of archival stuff.

For writers on Substack, there is a strong message of, Substack is your product, you should be charging/creating paywalls.

But that isn’t my model. My products are my books, not this letter.

This letter is about connecting with readers and giving a glimpse behind the scenes. Like the photo below, with my book, Earthly Bodies, on a indie bookshop’s shelf. This is such a thrill for me, that I want to share with you!

So, what do you reckon?

PS- A new book is coming… I really want to share the cover and will do as soon as I can.

PPS- I’m hoping to launch on KIckstarter so I’m doing a LOT of learning at the moment. Mainly of

Russell Nohelty

if you're curious.

Earthly Bodies by Susan Earlam on BookFolk’s Bookshelf in Buxton.