Why I Blog and Don't Write a Newsletter

I've noticed a trend that many writers are moving to newsletters away from blogs and magazine-style websites. I have several concerns about that and reasons that I still write for my blog instead of writing a newsletter.

One of the downsides to newsletters is that it means it is harder to find good things to read on the internet--especially free writing. Everything is sliced up and behind many different paywalls and subscription funnels. Blogs were free and RSS readers gathered them together easily. Even though you might have to buy or subscribe to a newspaper or a magazine in the past, you got a lot of different writers in one place for a very cheap price. Even mid-sized newspapers and magazines had several good writers. Now, good writing (and editing) is more fragmented than ever.

I also have concerns about how newsletters turn readers into a commodity. It eliminates the relationship that a writer and a reader can have. I wonder if it affects your writing for you to be getting your direct income from each individual reader. Would it make you change what you said to know that you might offend your readers and lose hundreds or thousands of dollars of income because of one post?

I don't think that most people throughout history have gotten their full-time income from their writing. I don't think most of us should make that the goal. Many people have had other jobs such as a school teacher, professor, pastor, or scientist. Their writing flowed from their work or it served their work. Some writers used their writing to get speaking engagements. That was where they got most of their income. These days, so many writers move to a newsletter with hopes to make their living as a writer. Most of us are better cut out to write occasional things with different goals and not try to make a full-time income from writing.

S.D. Smith regularly says that writing should be in service of the reader. He explains that any job that can be done selfishly or as an act of service. When we serve others, our work is transformed. I have prayed and worked to think about my writing as an act of service to others rather than a way for me to get others to serve me. That's hard, but I think a newsletter (especially a paid one) can easily be a primarily selfish act.

I still write a blog rather than a newsletter because I want there to be good writing in the world. I want to read a people's writing that comes from their real life and that goes out for free. It's the internet that I grew up with around college and after college. You could read a blog and find out the thoughts of an interesting person and the actual things that they're thinking about. It didn't seem like they were writing for money or expecting money back. They were just thinking out loud. I remember enjoying the blog of the Internet Monk before he died of brain cancer. I think of other writers I read regularly and looked forward to hearing what they're thinking about, reading, working on, etc. I'm not as interesting or thoughtful as the writers I read in and after college, but I hope to catch some of their spirit in this corner of the internet.

I also keep a blog rather than a newsletter because I want to work on my writing and get better at it. There may someday be a time where somebody pays me to write something. Right now it's a time for me to work on my skill and work on the discipline of writing. If I have something with a little more polish, there are other sites that have published my articles. Those sites want conventional topics with conventional ways of writing. This blog allows me to write and try things with less polish and without the tight focus that those other sites require. I don't want to give up writing about gardening, fitness, books, etc.

I also keep a blog rather than a newsletter because I don't want to feel any pressure to make my writing into something. It may result in something someday. It may not. Brandon Sanderson says that we don't ask every person that picks up a basketball when they're going to become a professional. In the same way, many people should be writing. You don't ever have to become a professional.