This week marks my fourth anniversary on substack! Four years of consistent weekly writing, four years of showing up, four years of mostly fucking around four years of not really findings out! When I first started writing weekly my initial goal was to write and then hit send. Just fuck around, potentially later find out.
After four years of writing I don’t think I can confidently say what I “write about”, each piece of “success on substack” advice or really insert whatever big spooky tech company in the sky we are talking about, asks me to get clear on what I am writing about, asks me to niche down, asks be certain. And while I am not 100% against those things, I have worked in marketing for a decade, I am good at it, I can make and sell and market something that does feel clear or niche. But that is so not what this space is to me. And after four years of not knowing, and experimenting and seeing if something would fit, I don’t think I ever want to be clear.
This Space Is An Experiment 📍
I want to declare it loudly. I do not want to know. I want to explore. I want to be so open to the process that everything feels up for grabs. To act like the creative journey is linear feels like some colonial oppression shit I don’t want anywhere near me. Creatives do this funny thing sometimes where we protest in the streets but then apply colonial 9-5 capitalist crap onto ourselves, and then wonder why we feel so shit in creation. To experiment it to move beyond these binaries. To experiment, really I think it so get good at making mistakes, making bad art. I never promise to be a good writer, but I do promise to write.
If you wanna stick around…
the Free.99
I write here weekly about creativity. I started writing the Creators Dispatch Jan 2020 as a way to get good at pressing send. I write about art, because art saved my life. I write about being an autistic women because I feel like an alien. I write about women and anger and I share it all because I want to be seen in that anger. I think that is why we gather around our art. To share and be seen. It’s why I know I am here.
Pay an artist + join our community!
I offer monthly community meetings for paid subscribers, called Open Studio’s to gather and discuss in. They have become the lifeblood of creative connection and the space where I pour all of my coaching an somatics and detailed love of art into. You can catch the replays in podcast form
In this space I also share personal essays and poetry, as well as work in progress drafts AKA the most fucking around I do. (I am currently in the process of outlining a book, if you are an agent or have any hot tips on findings an agent please email me!)
Thanks for joining me here here! This is what I lvoe about artists, we find eachther, we gather, we discuss, we noodle, we expeirment! I am so happy to gather here 🌸 – now I’d like to hear from you! Introduce yourself in the comments below. I’d love to know who you are, what you make and what you’re experimenting with 🧪
Phoebe 💕
*typos are left to reflect the fury passion and 3D humaness of being a passionate freak in the world – and you know not a robot *beep boop* I am just a human girlie living on earth with a mortal brain 🤸♀️
So much yes to this!