Resurrecting My Invisible Friend

Charlotte's Web and Literary Destiny

Since I moved my newsletter from Mailchimp to Substack in January, a lot of things have happened. Not least, I have discovered where all the creative, deep-thinking people are hanging out, building thoughtful and supportive communities while the rest of the internet rages, posts clickbait, and finds new ways to hate themselves in the sea of political despair and filtered selfies.

There are many things that are wonderful about Substack. 

I love that the app and website are ad-free, meaning I can be on a social platform without being bombarded by adverts for lip fillers (my age demographic), weight loss programmes (thanks, spy listening device I carry around in my pocket) and drop-shipped Chinese garbage I don’t need but for some reasons suddenly feel compelled to consider, wasting quarter hours like lawn sprinklers waste drinking water.

I love that Substack supports writers, whose incomes have been so enormously eroded by the internet, through Amazon’s royalty-crushing margins, the fract…