I Can't Play Subscriber Whackamole, Plus Call for Subscriber Writing, April 2023

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I want to point it out: while I appreciate your feedback, it’s impossible for me to please everyone because no matter what you think about my work or the subjects I write about or my pace, there’s someone else who’s telling me the exact opposite. The exact, exact opposite. I’m currently trying Monday and Wednesday posts for everyone and subscriber-only posts on Fridays. This is because of complaints, stretching back to the very beginning of this newsletter, that I publish too much and should write less and let the posts breathe more. So I’m trying to stick with that, finally, after a lot of dithering about it. And you know what complaint I got multiple times about last week? That it wasn’t enough content.

I could still try to juggle these impulses, fine-tune things a little bit more, but ultimately these are just irreconcilable. I can write more or less or the same but not all three at the same time. And the same basic dynamic applies to the subjects I cover - anything that some readers want me to cover less, some readers want me to cover more. I’ve dealt with this issue simply by publishing a lot so that people find something that appeals to them, but again a lot of people are perpetually unhappy that I publish too much. A common complaint is that I used to do more carefully-researched writing. I don’t really think that’s true; I don’t think people understand how much education research I’m reading that informs my education posts. But I could try and do more, at the expense of other things. Then again, some people find the education posts boring and ask me to do fewer of them. Every single time. Like I said, to try and please everyone would be Whackamole, and it just doesn’t fit my process or my interests.

I do read criticism and I do integrate it into my thinking and my process in my own way. But I have an imperious personality and something like oppositional defiant disorder and I ultimately can only write what I like and am moved to write, even when (as with this morning’s post) both the feedback is bad and the view count low. The people who liked my post from last week about me learning Korean really liked it. Then again, a handful of people emailed to say, “why am I reading this?,” not so much saying that it was a bad post as saying that it’s not the sort of thing that should appear in a professional newsletter. My indifference to that opinion is the same indifference that I have to your opinion that I shouldn’t publish the stuff you don’t like. It all comes from the same process and personality. As always, you’re onboard with that or you aren’t. It’s up to you.

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It’s time for the next call for subscriber writing. Please see here for details and make sure to email me at fredrik.deboer@gmail.com if you do submit to make my life easier. Deadline for this month is Sunday, April 23rd! Please use the following format in your submission:

Your Preferred Name, Your Piece of Writing's Title with Hyperlink

one-sentence synopsis of your piece

That really makes my life much easier. If I messed up previously and promised to include your entry in a later edition, please email to remind me! If you submitted something before the submission period began, submit it again! And if you don’t use the fredrik.deboer@gmail.com address, I have no sympathy if I fail to include you. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Non-subscribers, if you want to take advantage of this forum to share your work, you know what to do.