Thank you for everything

A Million Ways to Be a Writer says goodbye... for now

Wordicorns and Scribblers,

This isn’t the easiest thing for us to write, but it comes after many conversations and a lot of reflection. We are stepping back from A Million Ways to Be a Writer for the foreseeable future.

In this space, we wrote about creative self-care and making sacrifices for art, about writing with disabilities, and making the most of time.

If you go back to read those articles, you will discover a theme: we prioritize our art.

When we first launched A Million Ways to Be a Writer, we were both in very different life circumstances where we had more creative space and time and energy to give to something new and untested, something that was a little outside our comfort zones, but that we were excited to try. We are proud of the work we did in this space. So yes, it is bittersweet to be sending one final letter admitting we no longer have the creative space and time and energy to give this project the attention it deserves.

We’ve had a blast over the past 9 months writing articles that were meaningful to us, and articles that we hope you took meaning from too. We’ve loved hearing from other writers and sharing their unique perspectives. We achieved our goal of reading 1 writing craft book a year thanks to the Read It Your Way Book Club!

We hope that in the future we will be able to look back on this endeavor and see where we grew, where we triumphed, where we could do better next time. We are also not thinking of this as The End, but rather as What’s Next?

Understanding when it’s time to let go of one creative project to make space for another is an important skill to practice. Time is finite and we can’t do everything even when we wish we could. Writing novels requires focus and large-scale attention. Creativity has seasons. And so that’s where we both find ourselves here at the end of September: needing to step back from this newsletter and community to focus on our own art.

We know you understand because you are creatives too. You know the level of commitment art often requires from us.

In two weeks, we’ll send out our last newsletter. It’ll be filled with all of the links and articles we saved to share with you during the rest of this year. We feel it’s the best way to step away—sharing resources, uplifting voices, leading you all to more knowledge.

We will also be leaving all of our articles up for you to read for at least another month, through October. So if you have any catching up you want to do, now’s a good time. Articles that are behind a paywall will remain behind a paywall, but you could always pay for a single 1 month subscription to read those—or reach out to us if you can’t afford it, and we’ll see if we can help.

Now don’t worry, we’ll still be around, doing our own things, doing things together, finding paths that work for where we are and help us show up how we want to in the world. We’ll still be here in spirit, even if we’re not sharing articles anymore. We’re still loudly and energetically cheering you on as you continue to pursue your own writing and creative journeys!

And now, we’re going to leave you with this final bit of advice that you can take to heart or ignore completely: Write how you want, write what you want, spend time learning and practicing in ways that feel good to you, follow rules that suit, ditch the ones that don’t fit, and always remember that there are a million ways to be a writer.

—

Valerie Geary

&

Elizabeth Mitchell