On Giving Up Substack

c/o Tim Lott

A few days ago,

Tim Lott

(of Tim Lott’s Writing Boot Camp & Philosophy Jam, but more of his memoir Scent of Dried Roses and his novels, the latest of which is Now We Are Forgiven) wrote this in his Notes —

I always feared that when I started writing on Substack a few years ago that it would stop me from dedicating my time to writing fiction. And so it has proved. I’m not sorry that I did it, but I’m not sure I can afford any longer to spend all this time trying drum up subscribers when I could be working on a novel - even a novel that might never be published. A writer who isn’t writing is nothing at all, and it feels that way to me now. Substack, for me, isn’t writing at all in any meaningful sense. It is short pieces, scraps of thoughts, and giving out free lessons. I don’t think I can or should sustain it much longer, for my own sanity apart from anything else. I don’t think it’s worth the candle any more.

Why is this of concern?

Well, firstly because I have — in the past — fairly often been mistaken for Tim Lott. And I know, from Tim, that he has been mistaken for me.

Litt, Lott — it’s an easy enough mistake.

And we now wear similar glasses.

Once, I believe, he went into a London bookshop for a scheduled book signing, and was taken up to a small pile of my novels.

Not happy.

For my part, I was once about to appear on stage at the Cheltenham Literary Festival. A few minutes before we were due to start, the chairperson shuffled up to me, in the green room, to check over the introduction he’d printed out about me.

‘I do like your novels, and your memoir,’ he said. ‘But I have to say, the thing I really like by you is your column in the Evening Standard.’

Thus managing to insult both me and, by implication, the absent Tim Lott.

I am sure his column in the Evening Standard is not what he hopes to be remembered by.

I’ve also been confused with Tibor Fischer, which is harder to understand.

Tib and Tob.

(If I’m going to use my aptonym for anything, I’d like it to be some joint events with Olivia Laing under the banner Laing & Litt.)

And so, as you can imagine, I’ve kept tabs on Tim Lott, and I’m sure he’s kept tabs on me. (Not as much as Nicholas Royle has had to know what Nicholas Royle is up to.)

His Boot Camp was one of the earliest, and remains one of the best, Creative Writing Substacks. It’s going to continue — he’s not quitting completely. For a £5 sub, you can access his archive.

However, he’s giving up the weekly posts. And he’s clearly thinking about the worth of continuing generally —

I don’t think I can or should sustain it much longer, for my own sanity apart from anything else.

Well, on my lowest days, I can come close to thinking something like this.

Those are mornings on which, instead of writing fiction, I’ve used my available time — perhaps 6 to 7am before a 9 o’clock class, or, as now, during a one-hour train journey — to make a Diary entry.

Mostly, I assure you, I’m far from this. I’ve enjoyed sharing what I’m able about writing, and feel that some of the entries are among the best stuff I’ve recently done. I do think of it as writing. And, when I’m happiest with it, that’s when I manage to get across the strangeness of writing — the amount of time that’s spend in bewilderment rather than word-processing.

So far this year, I haven’t missed a day. And the discipline of this has brought out thoughts and strangenesses I wouldn’t otherwise have reached for.

But there is fiction I know I haven’t written, or haven’t written as fast or flowingly as I otherwise would have done.

Next year’s Diary is going to be slightly different, which I’ll say more about in December.

One of my fears is that, given the available input, meaning all the Diary entries, it would be a very easy thing to create an AI version of me — giving out roughly the same advice, in agglomerated sentences, forever.

Please, no.

My main hope — which isn’t dissimilar, but is more human, and therefore completely dissimilar — is that, with all I’ve managed to get out, particularly the Complete Guide to POV, there’s something useful and applicable and hopeful here for most writing days, good and bad, bleak and blazing.

Not me. Tim Lott by Eleanor Heatherwick.