You will mess up.

What if I write the wrong thing?

What if I accidentally offend someone?

What if my newsletters are drivel, clutter, meaningless?

These are common worries when you’re writing publicly. It’s natural to feel hesitant about sharing your writing, particularly when it’s on a subject you deeply care about.

Here’s the thing about writing a newsletter: if you write often enough, and if people keep subscribing to your newsletter, and if you’re writing with care and authenticity, you will occasionally write something that someone finds problematic.

You won’t express yourself well. You will offend someone. Some readers might find your newsletters irritating or unhelpful.

New newsletter writers often try to escape this fate by either:

1) Sending out impersonal, generic content, or

2) Avoiding writing altogether and/or procrastinating (which can show up as endless revisions and editing) 

Let’s not do either.

There’s little point in writing generic, impersonal messages.

If you don’t send your newsletter, you miss a chance to support your community and share your work.

Instead: Move forward with the knowledge that you will say the wrong thing sometimes, and that some people will not enjoy your newsletter.

Those people aren’t your people.

If you mess up, you’ll take responsibility and do better from there.

Anyone who can’t handle that will move on. Worst case scenario: they say something mean to you before unsubscribing. (And they almost certainly won’t say something mean.)

It’s fine.

Keep writing, keep publishing, and keep expressing yourself.

The right people will love your writing, and everyone else will show themselves out.

Take care,

Camille