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[Electric Speed] Go sleep in your spare bedroom
Electric Speed is a biweekly newsletter that shares resources for creative people (since 2009!), brought to you by Jane Friedman. Sign up here. |
A note from Jane When selling our house in Virginia, we worked with a real estate agent who often shares the following advice: Every once in a while, sleep in the spare bedroom and see what happens. (Or: go inhabit the dormant spaces of your home.) I wish I had followed his guidance. Over the holidays, a guest made the unfortunate discovery that our guest shower does not drain. It was ironic because we had taken great pains otherwise to improve the guest area. But we hadn’t used the shower. A similar rule can apply to your online presence. Have you tried using that contact form at your website lately? What experience do people have? Do your website’s social media buttons link to the correct accounts? What do your online bios say? What’s your sign-up sequence for your newsletter? In tech, this is called eating your own dog food. It’s a valuable exercise to put yourself in others’ shoes and also decide if what you crafted and presented perhaps years ago still best expresses who you are. If you don’t eat your dog food regularly, keep your eyes or ears open to what your guests say, where confusion or misunderstanding lies, or where you have to help people frequently. It’s a sign that something might need improvement. Jane ISSUE SPONSORJane’s Electric Speed ListHere are some of the latest things I’ve discovered. (I am not paid to mention any of these resources; there are no affiliate links.) Bypass long narratives and media on recipe sitesIt’s a cliche at this point: you find the perfect chia pudding recipe at someone’s blog, but it has an extended 12-minute read that spins a long childhood yarn about puddings, as five video ads follow you down the page. Now I don’t want to steal away these creators’ earnings (you are getting a free recipe, after all), so why not go ahead and load the recipe website, and let those videos play. Then copy and paste the URL into a new browser tab and type cooked.wiki/ at the beginning of the URL (before the https://). You’ll get the ingredient list on the left and the basic instructions on the right. I can already feel my stress level go down as I type that. I did not know about the Stanley QuencherI subscribe to a newsletter, Digital Native, that goes very long on tech/culture trends. So if you decide to subscribe, be prepared—it is not for everyone. I subscribe because it often alerts me to things I somehow remain oblivious about, like the viral phenomenon of the Stanley Quencher cup. Before it took off, The Quencher “was a lesser-known Stanley SKU ... with a handle and a tapered base to fit into a cup holder.” And I mention it in this newsletter because, well, the virality seems to be deserved. Just try reading about this cup without considering a purchase. (I have so far succeeded, though.) Set up DMARC for your newsletterThis year, Gmail and Yahoo require DMARC for anyone who sends 5,000 or more emails per day to their users. What’s DMARC? It’s an authentication protocol that prevents other people from sending emails using your email address as the sender. (Such a scam is not as hard as you might think. And it doesn’t mean you’ve been hacked if it happens; it is not about account/login security.) Here’s an article that further explains what DMARC is and how it set it up. Be sure to check with your email newsletter service provider (e.g., Mailerlite, Mailchimp) for their guidance and instructions. Even though I’ve had DMARC set up for my email/newsletters for a while now, I did not monitor DMARC reports (it’s a little tricky), nor did I implement strong enforcement that would absolutely stop delivery of emails that spoof my address. Last week, I did set a strong enforcement policy and started monitoring it. I recommend doing the same if you’re sending a lot of email or depend on it for marketing. (Again, the article above explains what to do. Hire someone to help, as needed, if email is part of your earnings picture.) Another note (and correction) about BeehiivIn the last issue of Electric Speed (Jan. 6), I mentioned in passing Beehiiv as an alternative to Substack if you’re interested in running a paid newsletter. I said it was “highly leveraged,” but this is not the right description. Beehiiv is a startup company founded in 2021, which was reportedly running a profit in spring 2023 until it got an influx of VC funding. It has yet to reach profitability again, but it seems to be doing well. (Substack is also a VC-funded startup still reaching for profitability.) I’ve always been wary of relying on VC-funded companies for growing a business, especially in the media and publishing sector. Years ago, when I launched a digital magazine, it was built on top of two platforms that were VC-funded. Even though they attracted top-shelf publications and personalities, neither platform achieved profitability and they went out of business years ago. Some studies say 75 percent of startup ventures don’t succeed—maybe more. So take heed when deciding where you build your empire. NEXT ONLINE CLASSJan. 24: Analyze Story Like an Editor with Tiffany Yates Martin Arguably the most important, useful skill an author can learn is how to study other storytellers and analyze how they elicit reaction and engage their audience. This course offers plenty of specific techniques for developing and deepening your knowledge of story craft that you can practice every day: how to assess a story’s strengths and weaknesses by observing its effect on you, the reader/viewer, and tracing back how the author elicited it; how to analyze and dissect specific story techniques–like creating suspense, maintaining momentum, developing character–to see what makes them effective (or not); techniques for bringing an objective, assessing eye to your own writing, and more.
Your turn: colored pencils (and similar)In the last issue, I asked you to share colored pencils or similar art supplies that you enjoy, with a preference for those that travel easily. I received these lovely and thoughtful recommendations.
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Electric Speed: resources for creative people
by Jane Friedman
About 30,000 people receive my newsletter. I send it every two weeks. Subscribe and get a free list of my favorite digital tools.
Electric Speed is a biweekly newsletter that shares resources for creative people (since 2009!), brought to you by Jane Friedman. Sign up here. A note from Jane The best quality books are not the ones that typically sell. The most talented writers are not always well known. The worthiest information rarely spreads the farthest. Or: The cream does not necessarily rise to the top. This is a message I repeat across my classes and writings, not to discourage people, but to reassure. It applies to...
Electric Speed is a biweekly newsletter that shares resources for creative people (since 2009!), brought to you by Jane Friedman. Sign up here. A note from Jane One of the best literature classes I ever took was called Shadow Literature. It focused on texts that subtly expressed the Jungian theory of the shadow self, or the parts of ourselves that we find unacceptable (whether emotions, thoughts, or personality traits). While the shadow self isn’t inherently negative, it’s what we repress or...
Electric Speed is a biweekly newsletter that shares resources for creative people (since 2009!), brought to you by Jane Friedman. Sign up here. A note from Jane I’ve had a trick shoulder for a decade now, the result of a pinched nerve that was never treated properly. Due to a mixture of laziness and hopelessness, I gave up on achieving normalcy. Recently, someone questioned why I wasn’t seeing a therapist for it. So I began reflecting on why I’d given up on healing. When it comes to a few...