Deborah's Days Like This Monthly Newsletter May 23

Let's call this one May Day, Mayday!

If you have recently subscribed on Substack, thank you very much for joining me here. You will receive updates on what I write (usually once a week on a Friday) either into your inbox or on the Substack app (depending on how you signed up) plus this newsletter at the start of each month.

Now on to the May newsletter which I have called ‘May Day, Mayday’ for reasons which will become clear in due course….

“If no-one likes a piece of writing, does that mean it isn’t good?”.

This question I’ve been asking myself recently is a bit like that other well-known philosophical question which has been doing the rounds in various forms since the 1600s - “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Although it’s been much debated by philosophers, it’s really a question about physics and should probably be left to the scientists to answer. Seeing as I gave up physics as soon as I could at school due to a complete failure to understand acceleration (I still don’t get it), I’ll allow Scientific American magazine to provide their answer (complete with American spelling) from 1884. "Sound is vibration, transmitted to our senses through the mechanism of the ear, and recognised as sound only at our nerve centers. The falling of the tree or any other disturbance will produce vibration of the air. If there be no ears to hear, there will be no sound”.  Of course, this leads to all sorts of brain-mangling questions, not helped by Albert Einstein who apparently during a lunchtime walk with a fellow physicist, suddenly stopped and asked him, “Do you really believe that the moon only exists if you look at it?".  

I’ve been asking myself a lot of these ‘philosophical’ questions because of a slightly humiliating encounter I had with an editor. I’d  booked a mini-consultation to find out more about self-publishing and if you haven’t done so already, you can read about what happened at ‘A Lot About Humiliation, And A Little Bit About Self-Publishing’.

When she asked who would actually read my writing, it made me question whether the value of what I do is in just having it exist or is it in having it looked at? Does it need to be read, liked and appreciated in the world to have value? Because most writers, artists, poets etc. are usually creating something that no-one has asked for in the first place, having their work looked at and appreciated does matter otherwise it can just become a perpetual cycle of creative labour. “What’s the point in me writing something every Friday?” I said to my husband. “Because you enjoy it,” he said. I’m trying to figure out if that’s enough.

My visibility ‘crisis’ has been heightened by the fact that it is becoming increasingly difficult to get any visibility on social media. Due to an ongoing spat between Twitter (where I mainly promote my writing) and Substack (where I publish my writing), any tweets that mention Substack are now ‘shadow banned’ on Twitter i.e. they will not appear in feeds, searches or timelines. Just last week, Twitter started preventing Substack image previews which means a link cannot be accompanied by a photograph and we all know how important these are for encouraging clicks. When I attended another workshop about publishing last week and was told how important social media is for increasing your profile, I felt a bit defeated! Hence the Mayday (distress call) …. I guess what I am asking for is some help from you. If you do read my writing and like it, please do share it with others. There is usually an option to share at the bottom of each piece and the option to recommend to other Substack readers. Or even just tell people about me and where to find me!!

I am thinking this all sounds a bit doom and gloom and you were maybe coming to this newsletter hoping to get your monthly dose of joy! Hopefully you’ll get that too! Seeing as I’m posting this newsletter on May Day (the other one) and May is one of my favourite months of the year, I thought I would re-release this piece ‘The Cherry Blossom Is Falling’ I wrote on May Day last year. It’s all about the cherry blossom which when it appears in mid-April never ceases to amaze me.

What else have I been writing about recently?

Well, this piece came about because I ate a piece of pavlova! It’s called Are You Conforming?

April was a busy month in Northern Ireland as we marked the 25^th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. This made me reflect on what I was doing in April 1998 and I wrote this called Belfast, 1998, I Agreed To Buy A House.

In my last newsletter, I mentioned that I was going on a trip to Krakow. At some point, I would like to write a more detailed account of that trip because it had such an impact on me but in the meantime, here’s how it ended slightly dramatically as we returned to Belfast. This is called An Aborted Landing, Moral Responsibility and When To Stop Tracking Your Children.

What am I enjoying?

If you are not familiar with this newsletter, usually I will highlight something I’ve enjoyed watching, reading and listening to recently. Here’s this month’s….

Something to watch…

Last Thursday evening, I held my inaugural Pop Up Book Club focusing on Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret by Judy Blume. It was an excellent evening and I hope to run another Pop Up Book Club in the Autumn (stay tuned for details) although I am looking for a better title so it feels less like a book club and more like an underground movement! We didn’t just discuss Judy Blume books as we also talked about this documentary which I highly recommend if only to marvel at Judy’s marvellous collection of glasses.

Something to read…

I’m not going to lie, I have struggled to find books recently that I have really enjoyed and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend to others. If you have any suggestions for books I might enjoy, please do get in touch as I’m becoming increasingly desperate. I’ve obviously become very choosy. But, from the 40 books I’ve read in 2023 so far, here are 5 that are worth a read. If I had to pick my favourite one, it would be Fleishman Is In Trouble. I’d avoided this book for a long time because of what I thought it was about i.e. a man post-divorce using Tinder to get back on the ‘dating scene’ but it’s actually not really about that. We get to hear his story and see everything from his perspective for most of the book until Rachel his ex-wife who has disappeared, reappears…. And that’s what it’s really about. You’ll just have to read it!

Something to listen to…

This may not be to everyone’s taste but for someone who treasured their Hysteria cassette in the 1980s and listened to it until the tape got mangled, I am deeply in love with this updated version of Def Leppard’s Animal recorded with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. (It’s also an excellent track to run to!!). There is a whole album Drastic Symphonies coming out later this month.

And that’s it for May folks! Thank you once again for supporting me on Substack. I hope you enjoyed reading this. I always love to hear from people so feel free to get in touch/comment/like if something resonated with you.

Love, Deborah