8 Questions for... Nick Hornby

A Fan's Notes

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

Nick Hornby

, a writer of books and screenplays since the twentieth century, publishes A Fan’s Notes, where he posts about music, books, movies, writing, football, TV and occasionally politics.

1. Why Substack?

I was already a subscriber to a couple of people here – the brilliant

Ted Gioia

, the equally brilliant

George Saunders

– but I still didn’t know what the platform really was. And then someone from Substack suggested that I might get a lot out of writing here, and I investigated more thoroughly.

Just about everything I do – especially as I’m working mostly in film and TV at the moment – is taking YEARS to see the light of day.  And of course the whole process is people saying no – directors, actors, investors. Substack seems to be the opposite, or at least, I need no permission, and there are no gatekeepers. I used to have a monthly column in the Believer, which scratched an itch to achieve nearly-immediate gratification, and which became a kind of diary.  But that column is now quarterly, and therefore  no longer provides the immediacy, so the Substack experience has been a joy so far. As have the people here.

I want to quote

Ted Gioia

here. He wrote a brilliant piece a few weeks ago entitled Why Creatives Will Win By Thinking Small, and he said this:

I had four reasons for bypassing the system 15 years ago:

1. I had more confidence in myself, and the courage of my convictions, than I did in the system;

2. I wanted freedom to write in my own way about the subjects that mattered to me—and the system would fight me at every step unless I took matters into my own hands;

3. I knew I could operate much faster and more fearlessly if I were my own boss; and

4. I wanted to have direct contact with my reader, with nobody standing between us.

This is perhaps overstating my case – I haven’t bypassed the system, and I regular mainstream publishers, and none of this works for scripts. But I identify with the spirit of his words.

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

I’m not sure I have, yet, but I’m not thinking about it. I am trying to import the groove I have developed from my three-decade career. I have a lot of parts to me – sports fan,  music fan, reader, writer in various forms, father of neurodivergent and neurotypical children, , blah blah – and I’m hoping that eventually my posts will mosaic into a whole person. That would do something for me, even if it doesn’t do anything for anyone else.   Then there will be a groove of some kind.  I have definitely been posting more than I thought I would, and I’m finding time to write posts – that may well change if and when something in my day job approached production.  It’s very clear from my stats that people have the most interest in “the writing life”, but that’s only going to be a part of what I write about, and I think it would be a mistake to let the numbers dictate the content.

3. How has it changed you?

People have been so welcoming and engaged, and that has made a difference. It’s partly the instant connection thing. Writers fail, on a daily basis. At the end of a working day we have invariably done less than we hoped at the start of it, and the work is not as good as we wanted it to be, either.  And we don’t get any feedback for weeks, months, years.  I feel less useless on Substack.  Maybe I can make this person laugh, or introduce that person to a song or book that means something to them. That feels like an hour or two well spent.  It’s certainly more worthwhile than addressing notes from producers that you’re not convinced needed addressing in the first place.  And I have really found a lot of writing that has been missing from my life. There are so many super-smart people here, digging into turf that the Guardian or the New Yorker would regard as too specific. But I love the specificity. And people like

Ted Gioia

(the Honest Broker) and

Ian Leslie

(The Ruffian) are writing things that I simply don’t see anywhere else.

4. What mistakes have you made?

Maybe I started off at too fast a pace, but it’s not dwindled to nothing yet. Other than that, mostly typos and wrong facts. The sub-editors here are the readers, which is scary. Other than that, I think the mistakes are in the eye of the beholder.  

5. To pay or not to pay?

Do you mean to charge or not to charge?  I am very heartened by the way that some people – not just the famous ones – have started to make at least part of a  living here, just through their excellence. It’s good news for everyone.   I also think that writers are asked to give away too much for free. I am very happy to support good causes, but  I am constantly irritated by spending thirty minutes helping out a national newspaper, say,  with their clickbait.   So I am trying to maintain value – not just for me, but for everyone.  It’s important that writing remains a profession, because that’s the best way of it staying part of the cultural conversation.  My shorter posts will always be free, but if I have written something lengthier especially for this platform, I will put it behind a paywall.   And I pay for Substacks I want to support. I suppose in some ways it’s a Ponzi scheme…

6. What artistic and technical choices have you made

I don’t think I have consciously made any, I’m ashamed to say. I haven’t posted any new fiction yet, but in the future (it may already have happened by the time your readers see this) that is a possibility. 

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

It’s definitely loosened me up. My day job this week has consisted of pruning a script in order to  make more room for scenes for the lead actor – painstaking, fiddly work that I wouldn’t have chosen to do if I was the only person making the decisions. But here I can follow an instinct through, bung it up, see if it works. It’s much healthier, mentally.

8. In it for the long haul?

First of all, a note of realism, or caution, anyway. We all want Substack to be like Wikipedia, or Spotify, part of our lives for the foreseeable future.  But history tells us that it has just as much chance of being like MySpace, or Friends Reunited. So let’s see what the long haul is. If Substack goes from strength to strength, then I think it really depends on a) my workload in the future and b)  the appetite for what I have to say. If interest drops off significantly, and I start to lose subscribers,  while simultaneously being harassed for work I owe, then I may decide that  I can’t justify it to myself. . But right now it feels as though it offers me too much fun and interaction.

Subscribe to

Nick Hornby

: