Can you put a price on creativity? What about community?

Conducting a cost-benefit analysis of nurturing the two Big C's

Welcome to What Now? with Lindsay Johnstone. I’m a writer, literary critic and workshop facilitator based in Glasgow, Scotland. Post-therapy, I’m holding the necessary space for myself and others entering midlife while very much still figuring things out.

Last autumn, I ended a three-year psychotherapy journey asking myself, ‘What now?’ I vowed that I’d replace those thrice-weekly therapeutic hours with something, but wasn’t then sure quite what.

Enter Substack.

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Hello friends…

I hope that things are bright wherever you are. It’s Sunday here in Scotland and I’ve stolen a few moments post-breakfast to put the finishing touches to this newsletter.

We’re spending the weekend in Crieff in rural Perthshire to celebrate my upcoming Big Birthday which I wrote about last fortnight, and I can confirm it’s been just about as plush-towels-buffet-breakfast-three-course-dinner-and-popping-corks as you might imagine. It was all moody skies, mist and smirr when we arrived yesterday and I found myself trying to find the words to evoke the place as well as the possible characters who could call it home.

A rural room with a view

Such thinking time is vital to someone trying to write. I’ll admit to scoffing at men I’ve known who’ve squirrelled themselves away just to be with their thoughts (very good - you can be a polymath while someone else washes your pants and puts the dinner on) but I’ve come to learn that I need this, too. So much of my writing happens on walks. On the edge of sleep or waking. When washing the dishes, even. And none of it involves pen, paper or laptop so I suppose these days, I’m always working.

This is not what I would have traditionally called ‘work’. I’d have said that work was teaching. What I do now for the national literacy charity I am employed by on the days I’m not writing. For that’s a transaction this world of ours understands. Do work; get paid for said work. Enjoy it, if you’re lucky.

And in the interstices of my ‘full’ life (see Jess’s most recent newsletter on her Substack

The Write Up

for more on this), I’ve pootled away in early morning bursts or late into the evening in service to my imagined future where all this paying-it-forward actually… pays.

During those snatched moments, I wrote a memoir. Secured a place on a agent-led mentor scheme for emerging writers. Went on a writing retreat. Queried agents. Got an agent. Embarked upon the gruelling journey that is going on submission in the hope of a book deal. Concurrently, I’ve written for journals and magazines. Entered competitions I’ve gone on to win or be shortlisted for. Broken the back of book two. Started this Substack.

Because at the heart of all of this has been a deep knowing that what I am doing is necessary. I am compelled to write and I’m confident that you - my community of readers - are finding resonance too. There, I’ve said it.

In this spirit, I updated my Instagram bio. Segued from the list of words I’d long ago popped under my name - babies, pals, fires - to writer. Thinking now, the former is a list of things I love rather than a description intrinsic to my sense of self. It was all a bit too Philip Larkin’s 'Afternoons' with his bored playground-bound mothers:

Something is pushing them

To the side of their own lives.

Aww, man! I finally get it!

And so, having shuffled myself very much towards the (midlife) centre of things, I am ready to announce a shift in the way I honour my work.

Since publishing on Substack, I've happily started subscribing and in some cases, paying for the work of writers I believe in, and whose work I cannot access elsewhere (some of my favourites have left traditional media outlets for a liberated writing life on Substack but I’m also championing emerging writers including Shetlander

Charlene Storey

in her newsletter,

Haver and Sparrow

and

Rebecca Low

who writes

The Hot Desk

). I feel like I’ve been let in on a big secret finding an online space I can draw energy and strength from as opposed to running myself down scrolling endlessly, blocking accounts and ads and feeling crap about it all for every reason you already know. In fact it reminds me most of years I spent nurturing another community - Garnethill Women's Collective - which did what it says on the tin, really.

The way we were. Some of us at Processions, Edinburgh, June 2018

I was at the helm of this wonderful group of women from 2014-17, following on from from my sister-in-law, founder Jolene Crawford (standing above left in spotty clothes) She, incidentally, now makes the most delicious loungewear, often sported by Joe Lycett and Philippa Perry. I - sartorially - digress.

Between 30 and 40 of us met in person once a month in Glasgow’s Garnethill Multicultural Centre, and more joined us daily online. Our Instagram was a smorgasbord of our juiciest cuts. A showcase of the best of us.

Partner massage, Club Tropicana; bullet journalling; BBC Radio 6 Music Festival with Cerys Matthews

Covid went on to have all the impact you can imagine, but the group is taking gentle steps to recovery under fresh stewardship. At its height, we charged a yearly membership fee and offered complimentary membership to low/no wage members, no questions asked. Our committee debated long and hard over whether to move to a subscription model over a donations tin whose contents often only just covered the room hire, but were blown away by the support we received. This money was funnelled straight back into the group, giving us a pot of cash we could use to attract the best guest speakers and workshop facilitators. Oh, we were living the community dream.

Continous line drawing portraiture, 2017's syllabus, teatime, lino cutting

Now, six years later, I’ve landed in Substack and am building another community. And, again, I’m inviting you to become a part of it. I can’t promise Cerys Matthews, Denise Mina or a slot at The Women of the World Festival (yet), but impassioned, honest discussion that was actually more valuable to me than the practical sessions.

Readers who choose to upgrade to paid subscriptions directly support writers like me. They are not paying Substack. They are paying the writer directly; cheering them on to create the necessary conditions to persevere; to grow. You see, as

Farrah Storr

said in a recent podcast (which one, I don't know - there have been many) we don’t have the protection of a brand - newspaper, a magazine - telling readers to value the writing. And for not having that to hide behind we’re bravely saying that our work stands on its own merit. You get to decide what is and isn’t worth your time and money here. That’s powerful.

Neither is this a vanity project. It is work. And good work takes time to create. Thinking time, drafting time, editing time, polishing time, promoting time, promoting time, promoting time… (I’ll stop now). And as hard as it is to assert yourself as a (privileged, white, Scottish) female creative person, I believe it’s a race to the bottom when we give ourselves away for free. It feels anti-feminist. I don’t see many men agonising so openly as the women are when they set up a paywall.

I’m turning on paid to open up subscriber-only content such as more conversation-provoking pieces about mental health, caring, and my reading and writing life as I journey towards (print) publication. I also hope that we can use Chat to help us get to know this tribe a good bit better. It’ll be a suck-it-and-see adventure, I’m sure, with constant thinking, tweaking and experimenting as I respond to what you seem to be enjoying a community.

I’m being realistic. I’m working on a second book at the moment and have deadlines to meet, but think this journey, too, is one that you might like to join me on. The world of publishing exists behind a very thick curtain, and I’d like to invite you to take hold of it with me and pull it back a notch.

Free content will still be available to all. I’ll be publishing my longform essay monthly rather than fortnightly, and the most important thing you can do for this fledgling (other than hit the button) is to share my writing with others and comment if you’ve enjoyed what you’ve read.

Stay cool, and I’ll see you all very soon.

Lindsay x