8 Questions for... A. Jay Adler
Spotlight on Homo Vitruvius
A. Jay Adler is a writer who plays a professor of English on Real Life. He writes in all genres, which is why he this year declared himself on Substack the “voice of the nicheless.” At Homo Vitruvius, he publishes a mix of critical and personal essay, poetry, memoir, creative nonfiction, and fiction, or as he describes it there: “A writer's renascent light against the darkness, shined through, literature, culture, and ideas.”
1. Why Substack?
It was entirely impulsive. If you’d asked me two days before I would have expressed no thought of it whatsoever. I knew of Substack. I know what goes on in the world of writing and publishing, so I knew it was continuing to develop and expand. But I was completely immersed in my novel-in-progress, The Dream of Don Juan de Cartagena, about the Ferdinand Magellan expedition’s circumnavigation of the Earth. Only the night before creating my account, I’d decided to take some steps to raise my public writing profile. In that context, Substack suddenly seemed an appropriate move. It is the happening, transformative development in freelance writing and publishing, even more now than when I began. Exactly how transformative we’ll see with time. I’m not enough of a seer to want to predict, but I see the founders and their team doing smart things and doing them, wisely, incrementally. Notes, an old development by this point, at about a year, was very important. I know it has its naysayers – people who don’t like social media. I understand their feelings. But social media are here to stay. They’re important, and Notes amplified the reach, draw, and importance of Substack as a publishing platform. After I left Twitter, I joined many potential replacements. I’ve gradually left or become inactive on them all as inconsequential to my writing life. For many kinds of writers but especially creative writers, Substack is the place to be.
2. How long did it take you to find your groove?
Have I found it? I’m always grinding a fresher groove. On the one hand, since the calendar tells me I’m far from a young man anymore, I’ve known myself as a writer for a long time now and knew exactly how I wanted to offer myself on Substack. I had my groove to start. On the other hand, it was a new medium for me, at a different point in time, so adaptations always need to be learned and made. Also, I’m a person who loves and needs change. Routine is crucial to productivity, but I hate it if it goes on too long, in every aspect of my life. I need to be reinvigorated. I need variety. I need freshness. (The many genres in which I write are not a bug, as some visions of Substack would have it. They’re a feature of who I am as writer.) So just as in everything else I do, I’m continuing to learn, from others and on my own. I tweak frequently in every element of Substack, trying always to make Homo Vitruvius a better offering within the boundaries of my original vision, which isn’t likely to change. I’ve done that again just in the last week: see my answer about mistakes.
3. How has it changed you?
Substack hasn’t changed me, I don’t think. But it’s given me a lot, as many others who publish here express. I’ve made valued friendships among its writers and readers. As someone who has been on social media for nearly twenty years, I’ve connected to a community – a writers and readers community – far more congenial to me than any other platform ever provided. I learn in so many directions. I’m enriched by the variety of life experiences I encounter and the writing that springs from them. Obviously, that’s always been an ideal of the writing and reading life, but Substack can make it all more immediately a part of one’s life, in a fellowship, not just in solitude.
4. What mistakes have you made?
It’s important for me to say that, in a way, I’ve been here before. I was a blogger, at the sad red earth, from 2008-15. Clearly, Substack is a different, independent self-publishing space from the wild wild world of the web and that heyday of blogging. I won’t bother to note all the supportive tools Substack and the communities it readily enables provide. But writers of all stripes poured into the blogging world in those days carrying with them similar dreams of success and monetary reward as they bring to Substack. Some found it. (Ezra Klein, as one great example, began his career as a recent University-of-California-graduate blogger. Now he is “Ezra Klein.”) But most people, as always, didn’t manage to grasp that brass ring. I got caught up in its pursuit a bit, as I have in other runs on fame and fortune.
I made the further mistake then of fulfilling my desire to write strong political commentary, in the late Bush and early Obama years. I think it was good work. It made me feel good. It developed a small following that rewarded me with the kind of immediate responsiveness that rewards writers on Substack. But that kind of writing is as ephemeral as fool’s-gold dust. And the readers I had drawn because of it weren’t interested in my creative work – the writing that really mattered to me. With a few unique exceptions, then, I don’t do that kind of writing at Homo Vitruvius, or in my life anymore.
So a first, reverse answer to the question, then, is that I haven’t made those mistakes. I am what I am as a writer, which is what I mostly give my attention to. People who see it and appreciate what that is will read me. The rest is out of my hands. But I now think I made one very specific, related error nonetheless, and I’ll address that next.
5. To pay or not to pay?
Writers deserve to be paid for their writing like everyone else for their work. If a writer has reasons not to seek payment, that’s great. Each to their own ends. I went paid early, at 100 subscribers. Several people and sources recommended it. From what I read, my percentage of paid to free subscribers is typical. I’ve never read about X or Y marker in the road that produces better results without those paid subscriber results being a greater goal than the writing.
My experience and observation tell me that too many people who offer advice on Substack don’t distinguish adequately, if at all, among the varieties of Substacks people author. The general advice reasonably includes guidance that one offer some form of excusive content to warrant and reward the paid subscriptions. Well, I’m a writer, on Substack and everywhere else. That’s what I do and all I care to do at this point in life, so I have nothing to offer but more writing. I developed a number of series for paid subscribers dedicated to specific topics that interest me. They interested readers, too. They just didn’t draw more paid subscriptions from readers.
My one notable mistake, in my eyes, then, was devoting nearly a year to producing that paid subscriber content, because it doubled my workload and slowed progress on my novel without directly garnering me paid subscribers. On the contrary, all evidence indicates that people pay for my writing not for exclusive content or as a result of reduced-price subscription sales or any other kind of special pitch but when the writing moves them, in appreciation, to do so and when they think they can afford it. That’s what the pattern of paid subscriptions shows.
I’ve just now returned to my original plan of publishing one substantial creative or critical work per week, always free at the time of publication. That’s a pace that I think can sustain my progress on longer works behind the scenes while maintaining a strong creative presence on Substack.
6. What artistic and technical choices have you made?
My pieces are longer than what has emerged as a Substack and general online standard, with 2000-3000 words common, and over 3000 words not uncommon. In the vicinity of 4000 has occurred. (I do sometimes stay around a 1000.) That’s the nature of the thinking and the writing I do. I’m not a casual, quick-hit read.
The visuals. The images. Readers have remarked on their quality and aptness. That’s gratifying. They’re not just tokens. I write about film. I’ve written screenplays. The best possible image well placed against the writing serves an important creative element for me, (within copyright restrictions – I don’t work far enough ahead to seek permissions).
Because of my background on social media, I like Notes. I’m very comfortable with it. I engage with and draw followers and then new subscribers there. I offer shorter versions of my creative and especially critical persona there. I’ll do even more of that now in support of my weekly publishing.
7. What’s been the effect on your writing?
The Good: I write a lot. I think about writing all the time. The craft. The art. The material. The craft. The art. The material. In my dreams. In the shower. All the time.
The Bad: As I said, it disrupted work on the novel. I’m working right now to reverse that.
8. In it for the long haul?
The foreseeable long haul, which might be very long. As long as mind and body cooperate, I don’t plan on not drawing breath or not writing. I’ll always want to offer a creative, critical voice to the world, and, Substack cooperating, I think Homo Vitruvius can provide that sustaining personal home for it. How important is that to me? As I repeat to my readers every week, “Remember, you read; therefore, the writer exists.”
WAITING FOR WORD can be bought from Amazon at link: https://amzn.to/3QQIcYg
I have said it before and it's worth saying again: Stunning writer, lover of literature, poetry that moves you, totally readable, a generous heart ...and more
Jay, I think the effect of longer pieces is that the quality of the readership increases even if the quantity goes down. But as you say each post ends up exactly as long as seems fitting to you. And I also relate to writing on Substack (and commenting on the ones I read) as making it harder to do other writing.