Hey y’all,
I’ve been sending out newsletters for over a decade. Perhaps paradoxically, the way I keep an element of fun and spontaneity in the process is to be totally militant and rigid about blocking off every Monday and Thursday on the calendar so I can come out here to the studio and write a letter to you.
I thrive on the challenge of coming in here with nothing and leaving with something. Even if I try to plan ahead, I never know exactly what’s going to happen. I’ll often think all weekend about what I want to write, take notes, research, get it fixed in my mind before going to bed on Sunday night, and then when I sit down the next morning at my desk I’ll look up at a sticky note that says “What feels urgent?” and write something completely different than what I had planned.
People often ask me for advice on how to write a newsletter. I usually tell them some variation of what I wrote in Steal Like an Artist: “Write a newsletter you’d like to read.”
I have a few more tips, like “Pick a repeatable format” or “Be consistent at a regular frequency.”
But my current personal motto is: “Newsletters should be letters.”