Behind the Substack with Elizabeth Austin

Read the full interview with the author of Writing Elizabeth

Today, I’m sharing another interview from the series I call Behind the Substack.

You might enjoy this series if you are interested in the writing process, routines, growth strategies, and tips for managing your time between Substack and other important commitments. In each interview, writers will share their strategies for growing their publications, tips for managing publishing schedules, and advice on self-care.

Working on your publication can be overwhelming and confusing and requires much effort and persistence.

• Think of the Behind the Substack series as a collection of learning nuggets you can apply to your Substack journey.

• I view Behind the Substack as an opportunity to collaborate with my fellow writers, share readership, and learn from each other. If you'd like to be featured, please DM me.

With all that said, let me introduce today’s writer.

Elizabeth is a full-time writer and a mom with a goal of publishing her “memoir about her daughter’s cancer treatment during COVID and the far-reaching implications it had for her family”¹

1. What’s your favourite coffee?

The coffee shop up the street from my house has a seasonal lemon blueberry latte that they only offer in May, and it’s my favourite. I get it iced with oat milk. My to-go coffee spending soars every year in May because I want to drink one every day! 

2. Can you tell me about the moment you decided to start writing? Where were you, and what inspired you?

I remember being very young and spending a lot of time in my room daydreaming. That was how my want for storytelling started, I think– with imagining stories and letting them play out in my head. Then, in first grade, I remember our classroom had a computer with this pinter that would produce really pixelated text and an image on sheets of continuous paper, the kind with the perforations running up the sides. We each got to write a story and print it out. I don’t remember what my story was about, but I remember the feeling of writing it and then watching it print out, and holding it in my hands. Something clicked inside my brain- I just wanted to feel that feeling forever. 

3. How has using Substack changed or influenced your writing style or topics?

Substack has given me a wonderful outlet for my writing that wouldn’t necessarily be a good fit for a traditional publication. I can come into the space with ideas that I’m still working through. I can write about things that aren’t timely, they might not have a marketable spin, they might not make it past the gatekeepers of larger publications, but they’re still worth writing about. There is a freedom in having my own space to write in addition to publishing pieces externally, and it has helped me refine my thinking around what I want to write about and where I want my writing to live.

4. What strategies or efforts have been the most successful in growing your readership on Substack?

Engagement is really key, I think, and consistency. I engage with every person who comments or restacks my posts because I so appreciate the support. I see the time they took to engage with me, and I want to reciprocate that. I love spending time in the comments sections of other writers’ posts, I love connecting with other creators on Substack. I share work I love, I talk about work I love. I also stay consistent with my writing- I post weekly, but I don’t think it much matters if you post weekly, monthly, quarterly- as long as you stick with it. I’m as diligent with a few hundred subscribers as I was with a few dozen because I’m not writing for an audience, I’m writing for myself. If it hits home with other people, that’s a bonus, and I’m glad of it, but I show up to the page every day for me.

5. Can you share an example of something you tried that worked better than expected?

Taking the risk of reaching out to the writers and creators I admire. I send the pitch, I send the query, I submit the essay. I cold-email editors and agents and other creatives all the time asking if they’s be interested in my work. There are plenty of times when I don’t hear back or when I get a ‘no thanks,’ but I’ve also gotten opportunities I wouldn’t have had otherwise. Asking for the things I want and putting myself in the running for them has gotten me so far! Who knew!

6. Since you’ve started your publication, what do you consider your biggest learning so far? 

That sometimes someone is going to say the same thing you said but in a different way, and it’s going to get more traction than what you originally said. I recently had an essay come out that got a lot of buzz, but it was for a magazine. A high-profile account on Substack wrote a piece adjacent to mine (and quoted me) but their post got hundreds of comments, thousands of likes, hit a whole bunch of Substack roundup lists. I let myself feel frustrated for an hour- then I went back to my draft for that week’s post (about something totally unrelated) and finished it and scheduled it and moved on. There are a *lot* of voices trying to be heard right now, the digital world is a loud place, and I’ve had to learn how to block out all the noise, limit my frustration or anguish to an hour or two, and then refocus on the work.

7. Can you walk us through how you plan and organise your content for your Substack publication?

I am running on vibes, tbh. I try to keep things in the realm of solo parenting, writing, and our lives after my daughter’s cancer treatment because those are my areas of expertise, but I’m also a full-time freelance writer, so some ideas get stored in the vault for other publications and some get shared here on Substack. I have a marketing background, so I wish I could say I have an editorial calendar and I plan my work out in advance– one day I probably will, but right now it’s all very loose threads. I know at the end of this month I’m going to do a wrap-up of a monthlong workshop I’m in, and I know at the end of the year I’m going to do a summary of the pieces I had published this year and write a bit about some of the workshops I took. But other than that, I work a handful of weeks ahead, with vague ideas that don’t fully come together until I sit down to write. 

8. What tools or methods do you use to stay on top of your writing schedule?

I use a desk diary- I buy mine from the New Yorker every year, and I keep it open to the current week on my desk. Everything has times and schedules associated. I block out times when I need to work on certain things, pieces that are due, submission deadlines I’m trying to meet. Because I’m a single parent to two kids, and because I have an active life, I need some structure or it would all devolve into chaos and nothing would ever get done.

9. On average, how much time do you spend working on your Substack each day or week?

I spend eight hours a week working on my Substack. That includes connecting with other creators on Substack, though. I spend four to six hours actually writing.

10. How do you juggle your Substack with other commitments in your life?

I set time limits and deadlines. I treat it like any other freelance piece. It’s like a weekly column, and it has to fit within the broader landscape of my work life. I set aside eight hours a week to work on it, and that’s all. I find a lot of the time I overthink my writing, so the best thing I can do is relax, not overthink it, write what I want to say, and send it. Otherwise I’d be tweaking words and moving sentences around forever.

11.   How do you care for yourself?

I spend a lot of time with my family. I have two teenagers, a Newfoundland dog, a black cat, and a hamster. Animals are so therapeutic. I never feel worse after taking my dog to the park and watching her splash around.

In addition to time spent together as a family, I set aside one night a week for each of my kids. We each have a show we’re watching together- my son and I are watching Shogun, and my daughter and I are watching Lost in Space. They pick what we have for dinner and we watch our show. It’s wonderful. I also love to travel, and I make it a priority to get away. Even if it’s just for a long weekend to visit a friend for their birthday, even if I’m just tagging along one-way while one of my friends makes a long cross-country drive, I make sure I’m getting away a little bit every year.

12.  What’s a book you’ve read recently that had a big impact on you?

I recently read The Fact of a Body. I took a hybrid memoir workshop with Courtney Maum through Jane Friedman, and it came up as one of the best examples of hybrid memoir. It’s a dark book, but the writing is incredible. It sets such a high bar- not a word out of place. It reminded me of what great writing is, the magic it can work on the page.

13.  Where are you finding joy when things don’t go to plan?

My kids and my friends are the core of my life. I spend a lot of time with my kids– we like hanging out together, we take trips and go to movies and events near where we live (outside of Philly in the US.) If I’m struggling with disappointment or uncertainty, I can fold myself into my little family and feel better. They remind me that there are pockets of joy available to me, that I don’t have to live in my low moments alone.

My friends are so generous with their time and energy. They’ve listened to me whine about the same anxieties I’ve had for years and they’re patient and wonderful and validating.

There is so much joy in having a friend over for tea and snacks or from taking my kids to a sculpture garden or out for pizza. We take our dog for a walk every night, and if the weather is right sometimes we bring the cat along in a backpack carrier, and sometimes we stop for water ice and sometimes we run into people we know. It’s wonderful. Just doing that can bring a spark of joy into my day.

14.  What are you working on right now?

I’m working on placing an Op Ed about the need for paid family leave in the US and how my daughter’s cancer years might have been different if I’d been able to take time off of work. I worked full-time through her years in treatment, and it was terrible. It had a huge impact on my mental health and on her and my son.

My big project is my memoir about our cancer years and the breakdown I had because I was doing too much- trying to care for two kids alone, manage my daughter’s cancer treatment, work full time, and not fall apart. She was diagnosed two months into the pandemic, and it all came together into a huge mess that ended up really tearing our lives apart. There’s this idea that kids going through cancer treatment are heroes who conquer their disease, fighters who persevere through unimaginable hurt, but that was only a fraction of our experience. The reality was so much darker and messier.

I’m deep in the querying trenches, but I’m attending a workshop in October where I’ll be able to focus on the project as a whole and have some insight into what’s working and what I need to adjust.

When my daughter was sick, I wanted so badly to know that we weren’t alone in our experience, because it felt really isolating. I’m hoping that by writing about our experiences, other people facing similar challenges will feel seen and understood.

Thank you Elizabeth for sharing and agreeing to this interview. Before I bring today’s interview to end, I want to bring to your attention Elizabeth article that resonated with me as soon as I visited her publication. It’s the title that had me gripped. Have a read.

I'm Nobody! Who are you?

Thank you for reading and your support, it means more than you know.

** Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

1. I’ve used a quotation because I pulled the description from Elizabeth's about page.