Hello loved ones, two quick things.
First, it appears that there are over 500 of you now, and that's kind of ridiculous and awesome. I’ve been writing these letters now for four years, and doing so has been refreshing and challenging all at once. I'm so glad you're here, and I hope you find something that lifts your spirits amongst the ramblings.
If you're new here and looking for what this is all about, here are a few orienting essays you can read at your leisure:
And from Five Lines:
Second, for a while now I've wanted to switch up paid subscriptions to an archive model, so I'm finally making that switch.
This is what that means:
All of my writing from a year ago until now is free access.
All of my writing before that has been archived, and if you want to read it you can do so with a paid subscription.
So going forward, Five Lines and the Tethered Texts series I just began are going to be free to read in their entirety for one year from publishing date, along with anything else I write.
Giving my current work away for free just sounds... freeing to me. You can still pay for a subscription if you want to, and obviously, my family and I appreciate the budgetary boost. But this way there is no ownership or obligation tied to it in any way. Just pure gift on both sides.
Basically, every time I have published a paid-only post there was a part of me deep down that was like, "I wish I could just not make this a paid post." So I'm not going to. I think I just hate giving out samples. I want all of you to have the whole meal. And if you want to pay for past meals, that's awesome. They warm up pretty well, I think.
For those of you who have opted to pay so far, I want you to know that I love you to pieces, I'm so grateful, and I'll have absolutely no hard feelings if you decide to cancel and save a few bucks toward your grocery bill.
I and so many other writers I know put a lot of work into our writing to make it excellent. I think writers should be paid to write, and I encourage you to support the writers you love financially. I don't think there's anything wrong with asking for payment either, obviously.
You can read writing that is better than mine for free, and you can read writing that is worse for a higher price. The fact is that a price tag on its own doesn't tell you much about the value of a writer's work, and neither does the number of people who like it. The only way to know is to read it, and decide if it's worth it to you that this writer keeps writing stuff like that.
Thanks for reading, friends.
C
Well said and not boring. Thank you for your generosity.
What drew me to your substack in the first place was your generosity as a writer. This is just one confirmation of my initial impression. I'm grateful for you and your work, Chris.