The Grasshopper Sunday Edition: Getting Personal
Are newsletters ‘professional’ or confessional or both?
I vote for number three, both.
After all they are letters, right? As in ‘Dear Friend, whether you want to hear it or not, this is what I’ve been up to. Oh, by the way, how are you?’
We don’t write letters anymore. One exception is my mother who is 91. She regularly writes letters, in longhand, to friends and relatives, most of whom are older. And everyone loves getting a letter. After all, a handwritten letter is a one off, just for the recipient, and a labor of love.
But if I sent you a handwritten letter, you would not be able to read it. I can barely fill out my rent check longhand (the only paper check I write these days, my landlord is old school). Even my signature is an unintelligible squiggle. I have not bought a stamp in ages.
But I miss the one on one nature of correspondence. Email, for some reason, never felt intimate and now is relegated to no personal use. Most of my correspondence is via text, an extremely abbreviated form of communication that has the advantage of being more or less in real time.
Or, is that an advantage? Does anyone else cringe when a friend Likes a text you sent with one of those thumbs up emojis? I can’t help but think that is a lazy response to an already lazy medium. I know, they are acknowledging receipt.
Letters used to be a primary means of communication and writers are professional communicators. So the rise of newsletters like this one, is a natural outcome of instant communication media that can be sent to hundreds or thousands in minutes.
This represents great power and great responsibility and an annoyingly easy way to bug people en masse. Things like Substack make it super easy. So, how personal should we get in our writing?
I’m embarking on a new adventure with The Grasshopper this week. If you go to the newsletter homepage on Monday Jan 9th, you’ll see a new option, something called The Witness Chronicles. And you’ll get it in your email because it’s my job to annoy you. It is what Substack calls a Section, a separate newsletter under the auspices of The Grasshopper. All my subscribers will get it, at least for now. And you can opt out, or so they tell me.
I’m still figuring this thing out, bear with me.
As many readers know, my principal writing outlet is Medium.com where I write about politics, current events, and climate issues. It is opinion/observation stuff, my take on what is going on in the world and why we might care. Very different subjects than here.
Each week I am going to publish a few pieces from that writing that have resonated with my readers on Medium, which means the popular stuff or something I thought should have done better (ego). Medium is a paid site and if you are interested in a very broad spectrum of writers and writing, the fifty bucks they charge annually is a deal. Link at end of newsletter.
And a chunk of that money goes to pay writers. But if you don’t want to enter that world of endless listicles, self-help, weird perspectives, rants, and a wide range of great writing, you can see some of my stuff in The Witness Chronicles. Check it out.
So, why am I doing this?
So you can witness my magnificence? Of course, but mostly because I talk about that work here, but many cannot see it because they prefer not to pay, which I get, except…
Writers should get paid, but that topic has been covered. So, what about the personality question? How much of you do you put into your writing? Let’s get into my thoughts about that.
“First, farang, please dump those childish notions you harbor our working girls being downtrodden sex-slave victims of a chauvinistic male-dominated culture; take it from me there’s nothing your media won’t do to comfort you in your postindustrial despair to make you believe your culture is superior to ours.”
From Bangkok Tattoo by John Burdett
An example of a character breaking the fourth wall and speaking to the reader, the farang, or non-Thai, who is reading this sophisticated murder mystery set in Bangkok. The author has his narrator, a Detective in the Bangkok Police force, set the Western reader straight about their preconceptions of another culture.
In this series of books (Bangkok Eight is the first title) Burdett uses this personalization technique to create a relationship directly between his eccentric character and the reader, effectively inserting us into the action. (Read these books, they are fantastic and exotic escape fiction and very well written. A window into a culture you might never imagine.)
When I write my opinion/observation pieces, I always use a conversational voice, the voice I would use if I were expressing my views in person. Not confrontational; instead using that personal voice to make my case but always leaving the door open for disagreement by the reader (or as I find myself thinking of them, the listener).
There was a point in time where these direct statements to the reader were considered radical especially in film, but now they are common.The best film example I can think of is Deadpool, where the extremely cynical superhero actually freezes in midair during a fight and talks to the audience, stopping time for a moment.
I might note that Shakespeare regularly has characters address the audience. But remember, his play performances were anything but restrained- the audience was an active and vocal participant!
If you want to liven up your writing, consider getting a little more up close and personal with the reader. As readers, we love getting sucked into the action or the issue. And these days we can even participate via commenting!
That’s another Sunday Edition. At this point they number in the thirties because, unlike my regular Wednesday Grasshopper, I occasionally skip them. With the new offshoot newsletter, and an upcoming plan to offer a paid option (yes, it’s time), I have a lot on my plate. And that does not include the articles I publish daily on Medium!
No, I am not a workaholic or overachiever. The majority of my daily writing, editing, and publishing is done in the morning so I can be free to watch Jeopardy reruns and other important things.
See you soon, and thanks for being here! Comments are open and welcome. M
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