Working Notes 02: Curricula

What this is and how we got here:

Part 1

Independent creative work depends on visibility and ongoing circulation. It’s called the attention economy for a reason. The business idiom has always been to go where the customers are. This is hard for me. The customers are, apparently, on TikTok and Instagram. There are reasons I don’t do interviews, go live, make videos, do a podcast, have any kind of public appearances. My executive dysfunction makes it almost impossible to be witty and charming spontaneously. The next best thing: look at where I threw mud at the wall, and where it stuck, where are the people. That’s Substack.

I have been extremely pleased with the community on Substack. So that’s where the articles live. Independent websites and Patreon are terrible for discovery. Substack is fantastic for it. That was an easy decision. Moving on.

Part 2

The other thing that helps with visibility and discovery is repetition. There’s a reason algorithms like it. There’s a reason why companies run the same ad over and over again until it worms its way into your brain. You don’t buy now, but the next time you’re looking for a burger or a place to donate your car, they’ll pop up in your head. Repetition sticks.

One of the ways to leverage repetition, aside from doing the same repeatedly, is to create series. Stick to a theme. This is why YouTube channels about cooking only post content about cooking. Consistency is rewarded. It becomes seen. It also builds trust that the next video is going to deliver the same sort of content as the last fifteen videos. If the theme is clearly identifiable but also has plenty of space to explore without running out of things to talk about, you’re golden.

Part 3

No one wants to hear me talk about my executive dysfunction again, but I have to acknowledge that it’s a large underlying factor in making this decision on how to work.

Part 4

Personal curricula are hot right now in certain corners of the internet. These seemed like the solution to a lot of personal and professional problems for me.

• Pick a topic

• Write a curriculum for studying that topic

• Publish the curriculum because hey, another piece of content to release

• Write about the books, films and art covered in the curriculum

• Create narrative roleplaying scenarios based on the curriculum

• When the curriculum is completed, start another one.

I have consistent content ideas that span the full range of writing I want to do. I have the structure and focus that my brain can work with. And for at least the first two or three curricula, I can write about learning to write and refine curricula.

If you’ve looked at the shop on lightspress.com and wondered why they’re a curricula category, that’s why. My entire creative process at this point is curriculum-driven. Well, except for these Working Notes. They’re either meta-commentary or outliers or maybe both. Don’t overthink it.

Move forward, fine-tune it.

Daily Recap

• Got all of this week’s Patreon releases scheduled for next week on Substack.

• Got all of last week’s Patreon releases scheduled for this week on Substack.

• Made progress on getting all of the newer/upcoming Patreon releases scheduled for the Lightspress Shop.

• Had some feels when, after posting clarity around what I’m doing, I lost subscribers. I mean, fair, not for you, I don’t need all of the people, I need enough of the right people, but still, ouch.

• Had time to work through the 1599 curriculum. Haven’t missed a day, even when the brain and the schedule haven’t allowed me to spend as much time on it as I’d like.