Do your Substack

I'm doing it

Hiya, I need to tell you something: I’m going to start doing my Substack. (“Do your Substack” – Ella Risbridger, to me). I’m going to write it every week! And I’m going to let you pay for it if you want to and are in a position to. I haven’t been in a position to pay for fripperies like this for a while now. And over the last year or so my definition of fripperies has expanded dramatically, as the list of things I can actually afford without compromising my family’s wellbeing has shrunk and shrunk. So, if you’re not in a position to pay for this, but can’t stand the idea of living without it, do not hesitate to email me. I mean it.

For many years I had two careers. I did copywriting for brands (banks, cinemas, charities, hardware stores, supermarkets) and that enabled me to weather the catastrophic, ever-decreasing prices being paid for writing in journalism and publishing (what I hilariously like to call the “fun” writing). For reasons to do with ego and obsession and writerly absurdity that I wish would go away, I have wanted to keep doing the fun writing. I get something from writing my books and every time someone cooks something or laughs at something or passes on something I’ve written. I like doing it, I think I’m good at it, in my own way. I think I’m good at copywriting for cinemas too but it’s different – it’s for cinemas, not myself, or people who read me by choice.

I don’t want to stop doing the fun writing but it is just not physically possible for me to sustain two children and two careers. That way, I end up sending out crap free Substacks in the dead of night every four months and no one cares about them because they are so inevitably crap. That way, I had a nervous breakdown. That way, and so many ways, mums are set up to fail. 

So, I’m using a price labelling gun like the one I used as a child in the backroom of Threshers when my mum was forced to sneak me into her work for lack of childcare. I’m using it to put neon yellow stickers all over my work to tell you I believe it’s worth something, almost as much as a bottle of Stella Artois. This is different to what I normally do which is apologetically announce a publication date for a whole book I conjured out of my arse in naptimes, would you possibly be so kind as to pre-order it, if it’s not too much trouble, it really does make such a difference. 

I know I am very late to this but my big, ridiculous hope is that this way might spell some “creative freedom”. Instead of having an idea, spending my time pitching it to a hundred outlets who don’t reply, eventually getting a commission and receiving £150 for what turns out to be a month’s work, by which point my soul is so diminished it needs three months to recover, I could just crack on with the ideas here! My trapezius is softening at the thought. 

For context, if I could get to 80 (eighty) paid subscribers I’d make the same amount of money I made writing a weekly column (each with a recipe) for a British glossy fashion magazine.

How will I do this Substack? There’ll be lots of the sort of snacks that were in my last book: recipes, daydreaming about being on holiday, cookbooks, a lot of stuff about being a mum, feeding my kids, feeding children with allergies, feeding myself, trying not to get ill, trying not to get ripped off, working it all out, soup, lemon pudding, coffee, recipes, recipes again but not always, longer research-led bits depending on how the finances pan out, thriving, drowning, existing. 

The Subsnack art you see here is by the magical Ofelia Botella. She turned a random snippet of my camera roll into the most perfect encapsulation of all the things you might find here.

I’m putting my whole ramshackle end-of-winter body behind my Substack and asking you: would you possibly be so kind as to subscribe, if it’s not too much trouble, it really does make such a difference.

The first one will be in your inbox on Thursday.