I have a secret. A lot of my writing comes from long, long comments I write on other people’s posts. I am often fired up and inspired when I have a prompt, especially by a compelling writer. More on that and links to awesome writers who inspire me further down. Another chunk is stuff that fizzes in my brain until I have to dump it out. Then, the other part is straight-up rage blogging, usually also inspired by something I’ve read or seen, but not in a good way. I feel obligated to disclose this as I’ve realized my latest word vomit on another writer’s thread would make a good post with some editing, and I should be transparent about how I get ideas.
Journalism is not my field, but I’ve observed some giant changes since I was a kid. We used to get newspapers. And watch TV news. And that was it. Then came local liberal arts/entertainment political papers, usually available for free, like the Austin Chronicle. Every city I’ve lived in has one, which is really important for the community. I wish I remembered to read AusChron more regularly. Another great paper, which I think is just digital, is The Texas Tribune. They do fantastic in-depth reporting on Texas politics, just the right blend of informational and readable.
Magazines used to be a thing. I can’t remember the last time I bought a paper magazine - it was probably Oprah - but they were mostly ads and a lot of crap about how to do womanhood that I didn’t want to internalize. But a slew of them are still online, and you can read the good ones without ads if you pay. The Atlantic is good, and the Guardian is (sometimes) good, though a bit clickbaity. I like the Daily Beast, and my favorite is Scientific American. Great publication if you don’t have access to academic journals, or don’t want to read horrible academic writing all the time, or need an article to convince your relative that yes, trans people are real, and no, gender is not sex, and yes, there are more than two sexes. For example.
I also have the obligatory NYT subscription even though they fucking suck and publish all sorts of pseudo-science TERFy shit about trans kids. My justification is that I’m a professor, and I need access to articles for my classes. WaPo is owned by Bezos, so NO. My husband and I play the games. At some point, I will rage quit.
But the bulk of my inspiration reading comes from other writers. Blogging was a thing from the late 90s through the mid-2000s (ish), but it didn’t really go away; it just mutated. I’ve always had multiple blogs, though I don’t update all of them all the time. I really like the format. I like that I can use my own voice at that moment, whether it’s explicative-laden or grandiose and deep-thinking. Many academics keep blogs to write informally about what they’re puzzling through. There are mommy blogs and food blogs and fitness blogs. They’ve morphed into multiple media platforms, including video blogging on YouTube, podcasts, Medium, and Substack. There are many more outgrowths and combinations, which are really interesting. I follow one dude who doesn’t publish writing but makes great TikTok content and has a Discord server. There are a lot of Substack/Podcast and YouTube/Podcast combos. A parenting meme Instagram account I started following over a decade ago now has a blog and a podcast.
I was monetized on Medium for a short time until they decided I didn’t have enough followers and yanked my account. I really miss that $4 a year. As it got more screamy, I moved to Substack. Substack is not issue-free. While you can decide if you want to monetize, podcast, have subscriptions, etc, which is nice, they’ve gotten heat for silencing marginalized voices. I don’t have a better answer yet. I usually write my original posts here, on Substack: Rage Blogging is Therapy, and then crosspost to my Medium page and WordPress blog*. I might also cross-post to my coaching biz blog if it’s relevant and not too explicative-laden. And on LinkedIn if it seems relevant to my career but not too divisive.
*I spend WAY TOO MUCH MONEY on WordPress and domains. I can’t let go of the old ones because they’re diaries or snapshots of my life at the time. With stupid yearly fees. I need to archive them and stop paying for shit I don’t use.
I promote my posts with member emails, on Instagram and Facebook, and Threads if I remember (RIP Twitter). I don’t have a massive following, but between the three main platforms, I have more than I would expect for my lack of trying.
Okay, enough on that. Here’s the fun part. Writers who inspire me through their own writing or open threads on stuff they want to discuss. Top of my list is Anne Helen Peterson’s Culture Study on Substack. She’s a great writer who covers a wide variety of stuff, and she does some excellent interviews on her Substack, which has led me to follow many other awesome thinkers/writers. Many of my posts' source material is discussions I waded into on her Substack. I happily pay a subscription fee to read her stuff and participate in the community she has built.
I also enjoy Burnt Toast by Virgina Sole-Smith. I love her book on divesting from diet culture and anti-fatness with your kids. I pay a fee, but it doesn’t get me some of her extra stuff (called Extra Butter, which is so good) because I’m on a journalism budget—still, lots of good articles and interviews and a good community with interesting comment conversations.
For rage blogging, you can’t beat Rick Wilson and Chuck Wendig. Rick is a former Republican political consultant turned Never Trumper (or perhaps the original). I have mixed feelings about some of his positions, but he’s funny as hell, and it’s super interesting to hear about how the “other side” sees the party I’ve been part of all my life, especially when they’re trying to work with us instead of against us. He’s raised rage blogging to an art form and is regularly published, profanity intact, in major publications. I aspire to such heights.
Chuck Wendig is a horror book writer who I discovered on Twitter in the before times because his tweets were so fucking funny. Disclosure: I’ve never read his books because I can’t do horror anymore because anxiety. I read his blog posts and follow his socials; they never disappoint. His writing is so. good.
A couple of thoughts on paying for content. It’s hard to cough up $5 a month or more for every writer I like. But it’s so much better than paying a publication that much or more and knowing that the writers will get a fraction. I haven’t monetized because I don’t have time to consistently post and grow my reach. I might at some point. Sometimes I pay because I support their content getting out into the world, and sometimes I pay just because I enjoy reading it so much. I subscribe to several other Substacks I’m currently not paying for, such as Samantha Bee and Robert Reich. I wish I could subscribe to them all.
Anyway, it’s been interesting to think about where I started, reading Dooce and Momestary in the early 2000s to how this type of writing and journalism has expanded, and how it’s worked for me as my topics and style have also changed.