How to Turn Research into Writing

How I Research, Record Ideas, and Put It All Together

Let me begin by saying: I think it’s a bit egotistical to draft a whole article about the way I research as if it’s some kind of gold standard. And beyond that, I have the audacity to paywall it as if it’s so great that you should shovel out hard earned cash?

So let me just clarify up front before the paywall starts: this isn’t worth 80 dollars of your money. It might be worth 3, or it might be worth less.

The main reason I’m posting it is because I had fun making it (I got to use a ton of pictures to illustrate my research process, which I found enjoyable). The other reason is because it’s the second most common question I get asked (the most common question being some kind of request that looks like “sub 4 sub?” or “will you recommend my publication?” or “will you give me long detailed feedback on my post?” or “how do I grow my Substack?”). And the reason I decided to paywall it is because it’s filled with essentially all the tricks I’ve accumulated over the years to assemble a project, and that’s worth something — at least, to me.

Also, if you sign up just to read this and then cancel your paid subscription right away, I will not hold it against you, mainly because I won’t know. I turned off the notifications for paid subscriber unsubscriptions because it hurt my feelings too much and the excuses they’d leave in the “why unsubscribe?” prompt were always something like “I just got too busy” which is too ambiguous to be genuine. I’d then fantasize the real reason that they unsubscribed, which, to my mind, was actually because they realized that I wasn’t as good of a writer as Josh Nadeau or Alan Noble.

So please — if you choose to become a paid subscriber, just know that this isn’t “how to grow your Substack.” It’s more a guideline for how to happily and nerdily compile research and then assemble that research into writing.

Withoutfurtherado: