Paywalled Posts in 2025

Choose a subscriber discount!

Johannes Vermeer, Woman Holding a Balance

In 2025, I’m gonna try posting some paywalled pieces, so here are a couple of discount options for anyone who’s interested: choose 90 days free or 20% off forever by January 2nd, before I post my first paywalled post on the 3rd. God there is just unavoidably so much alliteration in this housekeeping post and frankly it will get worse before we’re through here.

Why paywall?

I have held back on publishing some work—even held back on writing some things I’m interested in writing—because I felt kinda iffy about putting it out there on the wide-open internet. Some writing can handle the wild west but some writing needs a walled garden. On Substack, that garden is walled by money.

Also, I like money. Some of you are currently paying me for nothing, just because, I guess, you think my writing should exist. I’m incredibly touched and grateful for this. And I think some more of you will be interested in paying for private posts.

What will be paywalled?

Writing about writing

For the last few months I’ve been thinking/writing a lot about the writing process, what I am literally, actually doing when I write. It’s been really helpful for me & I’d like to post about it. But Substack already has a very high ratio of “writing about writing” to “writing about literally anything else.” I’ve seen other writers handle this by paywalling their writing-about-writing, so I will too.

This feels arrogant of me, because I am not so obviously good at writing that it makes sense for anyone to pay for my thoughts about it. But if you’re supportive or just nosy it might be worth it to you.

Writing I’m not sure about

Expect paywalled posts to be more experimental—not experimental as in “the existing, established genre/style of writing with a set of rules that rewards inaccessibility and artsiness,” but literally experimental for me, me trying to do stuff I cannot do yet. For example: stories with actual scenes. I don’t value sceniness as much as contemporary taste¹ dictates, but I’d still like to get better at it. Honestly I have identified a lot of stuff I need to get better at before I’m capable of producing the work I most want to write—but, having identified my shortcomings, I actually am getting better at those skills, and I think a little bit of an audience will help me get better at them faster.

Slightly more personal writing

Not that personal. I’m kind of ideologically opposed to juiciness/authenticity in writing. Frankly if you pay in hopes of juiciness, you will be disappointed to find that when I feel like something is so private I need to guard it, it is still well within the lines of what most people are willing to post publicly. Nonetheless.

Choose a discount!

So if you want to support me, or if the paywalled stuff seems like something you genuinely want to read, choose a discount by January 2nd.

If you’re curious where I’m going with this, have a 90 day free trial!

If you’re already sure you’ll want the paywalled stuff—or if you’ve been wanting to subscribe but have been held off by the cost—or if you’re already paying me and want a little discount—then be rewarded for your faith with a 20% discount forever.

And if you want to stick around for free, then enjoy and thank you for being here!!! The kind of stuff you’ve already seen here will continue to be available for free.

You know, this still feels really alliterative, but I checked and there are only 74 p’s, which is exactly as many as you would expect in 3895 characters of English text. Of course, that’s after I rooted out as many p’s as I could, by subbing “choose” for “pick” or “as I could” for “as possible” or “subbing x for y” for “replacing y with x.”

1. or maybe this fashion is starting to go out, in favor of extreme sparse minimalism (which I also kind of dislike for different reasons).