Why I write a substack
Yes, why indeed
It might be that I write a substack because I’m not an academic.
My wife asked me the excellent question about why I gave up trying to write academic articles, and is the substack the answer to that question, and I think it’s true enough and worth exploring.
That picture does not at all reflect my writing set-up.
I gave up seriously trying to become an academic several years ago now. Academia is a particular kind of game, and it requires that you play it in a certain way, which makes no sense to outsiders, but basically you must have certain types of publications, when you finish your PhD, that look good to other academics, and give you the right kind of prestige, and then you need to get a job straight away. Otherwise you end up in purgatory, from which there is no escape.
For several reasons, I lost that game, and once you’re a few years post-PhD you’re chances of being competitive become worse and worse.
The only people who benefit from writing academic articles are academics. It’s a significant amount of labour to write a journal article, which few people will read, and the only pay-off is academic prestige. Which is a coin only redeemable inside academia. Because I was on the outside, it become apparent that trying to write journal articles was me pouring countless hours of labour into an activity with no return on investment. So, I gave it up.
But I am a chronic thinker, and I process thoughts better when I express them, either in writing or in speeches, and I have a lot of thoughts about a lot of topics. Substack is really the perfect fit for these.
Really this is just the resurrection of early 00s blogging.
I write here mostly because I enjoy the discipline of writing. I don’t have a particularly large readership, it’s not growing at any measurable rate either. I probably know more of my readers personally than not. I read what I want to read about, and I write about either that portion of the books I’ve read that seem interesting enough to me, or else a range of other topics and thoughts I have that (a) would be better put to paper, (b) I suspect might be at least vaguely helpful to some people out there.
All of which to say, thank you for reading. I do hope what I write is of some use to some of you some of the time. A special thank you to (a) those kind enough to send some money my way for this; (b) the small few who like a post here or there, leave a comment, re-stack a quote, or send an article along to a friend. All those actions mean a lot to me as well.
Given that my prospects of entering academia remain virtually nil, I’ll keep on writing here.
I don't know why the algorithm put your work in my way but I'm very very glad it did! I have gained a lot from your work, thank you for it!
As one who has more than once gone in and out of the ‘game’ you so aptly describe (how fickle it is!) , this account really rings true. University based academia is a prestige economy with a coin only redeemable inside the realm. So well said! I value your wide reading, wide writing and deep thinking very much. Your writing always encourages me that the goods that academic writing in past eras pursued, before hyper specialisation, before intensified output metrics, with fewer arbitrary distortions in the prestige economy, can be pursued in just the register of communication you engage in, in the community of letters you convene. Your writing here is always intellectually honest, deeply read, and reaches well across siloes. So my / our thanks to you Seumas!