Spinning my wheels in space

trying to do everything at once

Thoughts race

Make them stop

Part of me just wants to stare

and think

and marinate

*It’s the day after. We had a massive workshop yesterday. A masterclass in writing. It felt like that, perhaps due to our excellent presenter Vicki Bennet. Vicki has a way of appearing calm, composed and warm whilst imparting a tonne of information. How she teaches means that every morsel drips into the brain. There is no waste.

I am still downloading

Which is what she said would happen. Vicki also suggested we go home and marinate in it all. A term which I love though I may be more of a percolator than a marinator.

I met a large group of other passionate writers. It was a heavenly way to spend the day.

I came home inspired

If you are reading my writing on Substack. Which I admit has been a strange little conversation in order to get my brain thinking about other opportunities in how I might use this platform, I wanted to let you know it is changing.

For the newer followers of this blog, in 2020, when the world went into lockdown and I couldn’t travel anywhere – I decided to write an online magazine called Audacity. Through Audacity, I interviewed many interesting characters, mostly creative types, writers, bloggers, poets, painters, photographers, sculpters, entrepreneurs, and other inspirational people. You can find links to the issues on my home page.

After five issues and six months, I decided that was enough. Audacity had turned into a beast that consumed far more energy than I had available to write within the 30-day timeline afforded each copy. I gave up my beloved publication and thought that was the end. The amount of time and energy I put into the magazine could never repay me in anything other than the joy of creating it. Unfortunately, that is not enough justification to write it when it took me away from my work and life, which did pay and was enriching and fulfilling on another level.

But this morning, I suddenly thought I could write a couple of pages or interviews (beginning with one) each week and put it behind a paywall. That way I would get a small return (a very small return) for my time, and Audacity and its wonderful characters and information could live on.

It’s okay for creative types in the city, but in the bush, we can be few and far between.

Anyway, that is the thought that is circling like a persistent mosquito. I don’t know if anyone would pay to read about other people or not. The huge popularity of Audacity was the ease with which it could be shared with no walls or barriers, where people had to swipe a card or enter details. That’s why it grew so fast, I’m sure. But with substack you just sign up once, and then the email is delivered to your inbox once a week.

I have learned a great deal through the experience of Audacity. The greatest lesson was that we should not give our energy away for free. I do that here on the blog and always will, but on substack, the opportunity exists to do things differently.

A very persistent mostquito.

Let me know in the comments if you would like to see it rise again, and if you would like to share your book and the story of why you wrote it, where your inspiration comes from, that sort of thing or email me at kate@athousandbitsofpaper.com and if I get enough interest, I’ll begin publishing again.

Here is to inspiration and the people that deliver it to us and others. It really does make the world go around.

Mine anyway 🙂