8 Questions for... Jeffrey Streeter

English Republic of Letters

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

Jeffrey Streeter

is a recovering cultural bureaucrat trying to join the dots of an international life. His essays on literature, culture, history, and language populate the library of the English Republic of Letters, his place of residence on Substack. Jeffrey isn’t famous but is occasionally mistaken for his twin brother (who isn't famous either). 

1. Why Substack?

After I retired from full-time employment, I knew I wanted to “write,” as I mentioned here. But where, how, what, and for whom? Inevitably, I found myself buying a domain name, setting up a website, and starting to write. They were very baggy literary memoir essays about my life spent mostly out of my home country, moving from continent to continent. Just as I’d wandered into my “career,” without a clear purpose in sight, so I wandered into the foothills of blogging with no map—and no readers, of course. Then I started to follow, on someone’s recommendation, the excellent

Anne Helen Petersen

. I’d also read that Substack was a “new model” for writers and writing. The old model was equally unfamiliar to me, to be honest, but I thought, perched as I was in my lonely internet domain, anything was better than just writing to the void. So, like Satan in Paradise Lost flapping his wings in pursuit of the distant Eden below, off I flew. To paraphrase Milton, I’m “glad that now my Sea should find a shore.”

2. How long did it take you to find your groove?

Rather to my surprise, a few months in, I was into a rhythm that involved writing weekly essays that were going out to a slowly expanding group of readers. I was very lucky to find some fabulously supportive writers & readers. If I look back at some of those early readers, some of whom, remarkably, still read and comment on my essays, I feel full of gratitude. They are the reason I’m still here.

3. How has it changed you?

For better or for worse, Substack is my formative experience as a writer outside the limits of the writing I did in my former job or do now as a copywriter and science writer (work I greatly enjoy). I went from a wordy, unfocussed and vague purveyor of scarcely readable—and wholly unread—essays to being a writer of, well, slightly better ones. 

I know from experience that going from zero to knowing something is the hardest and most exciting part of learning a language. Then you get to the even harder and much less exciting part of pushing on to the next stage. So it is with writing. At first, every gain, any improvement, seems to take you a long way from where you started. But as you begin to focus on where you might wish to get to—inspired in part by the achievements of others—you begin to realise how far you have to go. Again, to paraphrase Milton:

“So I with difficulty and labour hard/Mov'd on.”

4. What mistakes have you made?

An early one was using AI images to illustrate my essays. I’d been experimenting with AI for a few months and was keen to try it. But I soon realised that it didn’t work for my kind of essay. It might well work for others (and I sometimes use AI images in my other work), but not for my essays on Substack. 

Like most other newcomers, I fretted over numbers too much. I’d like to think I’m over that now [furtively checks views on latest post].

For me, reading on Substack and writing on the platform are quite closely related, and another mistake I made was to oversubscribe. I found that it reduced my ability to discern where my true community was, and this may have actually slowed down my development as a writer. 

Another mistake is more recent. I think at the beginning I was more willing to experiment, which was healthy. I suspect that as my readership has grown, I’ve become a little less willing to try new things. That’s something I need to work on. 

5. To pay or not to pay?

First, as a reader, taking out paid subscriptions (again, I took out too many) was an important step for me. It allowed me to support the writers I admired or found interesting. 

Payment is essential to the model, but it works differently for different people. It’s obviously a source of significant income for a few. For most of the rest of us, it’s about deeper engagement with our readers and about the recognition that we have something to offer. 

I hesitated for some time about when to switch on payments. The best advice I got was from the amazing

Amanda B. Hinton

, who suggested waiting until I had enough readers—I think 1,000 was the number she mentioned—to show a certain track record and credibility. I asked Amanda to help me launch my paid offer in September this year, and I’m thrilled with the result. The income side of things is basically to help me continue to pay for subscriptions on Substack. I need it to become cost-neutral! 

But the big plus has been to have an additional community of supportive readers—my Supporters, as I call them—with whom I can build even more engagement. From what I’ve experienced so far, it’s working amazingly well. I’m incredibly grateful to all of my Supporters. 

6. What artistic and technical choices have you made?

I mentioned imagery above, and for me, it’s become important to have good-quality paintings or photos related to the subject I’m writing about. I have zero ability in art or design, but as my readers will have learnt by now, I have an enduring love for pictorial art. 

As I don’t write fiction or poetry, my main focus is on a hybrid personal-literary essay. I’ve tried to avoid standard literary criticism because there are so many who can do it better than I can. My only claim to uniqueness is being me (though even that claim is weakened by having an identical twin brother). 

So I try to put myself into my essays and let my experience and point of view mediate the topic, whether it’s a poem, a place, or a painting. I aim to do this without it being “about me.” I want to allow the reader to experience the subject of the essay for herself. My role is to offer a way into the subject that might offer the chance for her to perceive it in a new way—or to discover a wholly new thing (a place unvisited, a poem not yet read). 

In addition to what I can bring to bear in terms of experience, reading, or research, I also want to explore the resources of the language in order to help my essays create their effect more readily. This includes the rhythm and shape of sentences, the use of metaphor and imagery, and even alliteration.

The effect I’m going for—without getting close, of course—is a little like the Spanish prose of a writer I hugely admire, Eduardo Galeano. His Memoria del Fuego (Memory of Fire Trilogy) (1982–6) was a magnificent fusion of history and poetry and storytelling. Of course, the English language wouldn’t allow me to sound like him even if I was capable of doing so, which I’m not. But he shines somewhere over my laptop as I type out my essays. To quote from Milton a final time (probably), he is “th' Empyreal Heav'n” while I’m

hanging in a golden Chain 

This pendant world, in bigness as a Starr 

Of smallest Magnitude 

In other words, I’m just a speck of reflected light. But at least I’m visible. 

7. What’s been the effect on your writing?

I guess I’ve touched on this above. The self-imposed discipline of weekly essays has given me confidence; I know I can turn my inchoate thoughts or impressions into something half-readable. And reading how others do it and do it better—I said above that my reading on the platform is important for my writing—is a way that I can continue to see ways of improving. 

An issue for me, however, is that, while I have no ambitions to produce a book or even offer an essay for publication in a journal, how could I find a way to stretch myself towards longer essays? The weekly cadence doesn't really lend itself to truly long-form work. That’s probably something the wisdom of the community here on Substack can help me with!

8. In it for the long haul?

I’d like to think so. It’s mostly about the community and readership. So if other people stay and continue to read and write the way they do now, then yes, I’ll stay on. 

At the moment, I feel like an apprentice in a vast magical workshop of words. I don't imagine I'll ever become a fully credentialed Sorcerer. But who knows, if I hang around here long enough and the place doesn't get flooded, I might just pick up a few tricks of my own. 

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