Gratitude

Wednesday is about books and reading. Sometimes it’s just about writing. Today, it’s about how I was recently featured in an article promoting e-newsletters. And I’m very grateful!

Last weekend I was featured in Your Weekend, a section of the newspaper and available online. The story was about newsletters, the emails that arrive in your inbox if you sign-up — hey, like this one!

It was very nice to be asked about it all. The journalist that emailed through the request for a chat wanted to know about Substack, and newsletters in general. How I got on with it all, what I liked about it, whether it worked for me, and why, and how. That sort of thing.

It was an intro to a listicle — mentioning some newsletters. In follow-ups, I was asked to help recommend some arts and culture newsletters (“besides your own great work of course”).

And then the article came out and my photo was there. And a few old fashioned newspaper-reading types have messaged to say they saw it. And a few online-reader types sent me a link, or just messaged to say they’d seen it. Or clipped a part of it. All of which is very nice.

I’m really grateful.

But, it was, as Elton John might say, a little bit funny…

The newspaper covering newsletters had “fired” me via email many years back. I’d had this gig review blow up big time. Robbie Williams hadn’t liked the cut from my jibes, or however that expression goes. And, y’all know the story by now, or can Google it. He tweeted a photo of me holding my infant son. A lovely moment captured by a friend at a local record store on Record Store Day. Oscar, then just five months old, enjoying his first live music. Robbie had tweeted this out and called me a “baby eater”. His twitter followers delighted. Many of them had been at the gig the night before and cheered furiously when Robbie had monologued about how if anyone ever took a photo of his children and shared it he would take the camera off them and smash it to pieces. Family, he said, was sacred.

It’s a big old baffling story. But basically the newspaper I wrote for — and its connected website (back then they were called The Dominion Post, but now it’s just The Post) — was super keen for updates, really enjoying the attention the review garnered. But through it all, they didn’t offer any support or protection (“love and affection”?) they just wanted more. And more. And more.

And then a year later, as a freelancer is wont to do, I published about the impact of the review on my family — briefly there had been worldwide media attention. It hadn’t quite blown over in a day or two. I was writing a parenting column for The Spinoff and I wrote a piece to mark the anniversary of a surreal time, under the guise of being a parent and a parenting writer. What’s actually sacred? That sort of thing. (It had always amused me that Robbie had done his wee rant about protecting the image of his children — then shared mine).

The day I published the Spinoff column, Stuff and the Dominion Post wrote me an email saying thanks for all the inches of words but no more would ever be needed again. And that was the end of nine years of daily blogging and 16 years of contributing to the newspaper. Often for no money at all — more often than not. Even though I had to put up with online comments suggesting I was paid by the click, and was a wind-up merchant feathering my own nest.

Actually it was a hobby, and I was a hobbyist. Because that sort of writing never really paid (turns out in more than one way).

Robbie Williams named (and shamed?) me and my family in his memoir — it’s there across several pages. Which is just nuts, right? Funny. But weird. He also wrote me an apology email after he read my Spinoff piece. But I think that was more about damage control since local interviewers kept bringing up the “beef” between us whenever he’d plan to tour here again, or release new music. Someone in his team wanted it over. Me not falling all over him for his apology email is also in his bloody memoir! I swear, you cannot make this shit up…

Anyway. Yeah. That was largely the last I’d had to do with The Post.

I mean, there was a request to help them out with some summer playlists or something, best summer music or whatever the generic Summer Holiday entertainment article is — again, for no money. So I politely declined. At the time they asked, I didn’t even have a job. It was a weird turn of events, but being in my 40s, and a stay at home dad for the crucial time in my son’s life, and then having this Robbie Williams story so easily Google-able, and all the comments sections pointing out I was an ogre because I didn’t like their flatmate’s music, or someone’s favourite ever band had been called turgid by me or whatever, meant that getting a job was quite hard. I could sometimes get interviews. And then I was always asked about my profile. One I was trying to ditch, or which was, at the least, completely not relevant regarding the jobs I was applying for. But it kept coming up. And so, on my own website, I had desperately tried to “monetise” but not being remotely good at business is part of what had attracted me to the discipline of writing I reckon. A hiding place of sorts. Something I could control. (Mostly).

This Substack newsletter was a way forward. A chance to gather all my writing in one place, own a comments section — remove the trolls, and pump out some writing for people that cared, or were, at the least, somewhat interested. I’m so grateful to anyone reading, to anyone that’s ever read any of these newsletters. I truly mean that. It’s such a treat to think a piece of writing you do, mostly to keep yourself sane, ends up in someone’s phone or inbox, and on their screen for a precious few minutes of break-time, or commuter travel or while their child is in swimming lessons, or whatever.

So, when The Post called, asking for help with a story about newsletters, I thought why not eh. I can point to the love I have for this format, and how it’s really been a blessing and a privilege. Gratitude is good. I gave my time, no stress, and plenty of soundbites around the process and what I loved about it.

The published article very generously mentions me by name and has my photograph. It’s really been nice to get some messages of congrats or recognition around this. Like I say: Gratitude.

It would have been so pesky to go into all that history of how I was once one of the main entertainment writers for the paper, and all without any guarantee of work, but paraded around when it suited and claimed — from time to time - as “staff”.

It also would have been way over the top to name my newsletter by title (“Sounds Good!) or to point out its platform (here, Substack) or provide a link back in the online article. And why bother mentioning it in the list of recommended newsletters eh? No point at all. Just use the context of me finding value in a format to set up a list of links to newsletters featuring writers that didn’t give their time to promote what they do.

But, um, where was I. Gratitude. Yes. I am so grateful to all of you, any of you, reading this. Or any of the other pieces here. And I’m grateful for the Your Weekend coverage too. So, many thanks for that — here’s the piece they wrote (again) and you’ll find some great newsletters in their recommends that you might want to check out as well.