The Future

Thinking about Writing

First, I’ve noticed that, even though I’ve paused paid subscriptions, as I don’t think that I’m writing regularly enough to justify accepting regular payments at the moment, I am still getting a couple of monthly payments through Stripe.

I had a conversation with the Substack help bot and it seems there’s no way for me to pause subscriptions to my Substack made through the Substack App except by completely severing my Stripe account from my Substack account, which I don’t really want to do in case I ever want to restart subscriptions.

So, if you think you may have subscribed to me through the app, please turn your subscription to a free one! I’ll let you know if I ever restore paid subscriptions. I think two or three people are still paying me every month.

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I still have little time to write, between a part-time job and being a full-time Dad, but this perhaps give too much time to think about writing. It’s better to just write, but most of the time, I can’t, but I can think.

Lately, I’ve been feeling frustrated with Substack, both the crowding-out of quasi-hobbyist writers looking for a break (like me) by professional journalists and the fact that I feel increasingly frustrated that the only posts I write that people seem to like are about antisemitism, whereas I want to write about other topics too (not instead of), more general political/social/cultural commentary, maybe even more philosophical or literary topics. I’m working on a big post (probably two posts) about technocracy and populism, which I think is the real political divide of the age, more than left and right. I think it’s good, but I also wonder about it vanishing without a trace on Substack. I do think there’s something to be said for writing for the sake of writing, even if no one reads, or for the sake of a small, loyal crowd of readers, but it can be frustrating to invest so much effort in something that so few people see.

Then I remember that, when I write about what I want to write about, it mostly turns into stuff about old British science fiction TV or other similarly obscure stuff. I think I possibly could turn that into actual cultural commentary, but I doubt anyone would read it.¹ So, however, much I’d like to write about The Avengers (the 1960s British espionage/science fiction-adjacent TV series, not the Marvel Cinema “Universe”), Doctor Who novelisations or The Buggles’ only album, The Age of Plastic (which I’ve been obsessed with for some months now)… well, maybe I should not.

Actually, I say that, but I’ve been re-watching every (surviving) episode of The Avengers for well over a year now and was hoping to finish soon, but the last DVD was faulty, so I’m stuck halfway through the penultimate episode (although I have 26 episodes of The New Avengers to watch afterwards…), waiting for a replacement from eBay. It was during one of my favourite episodes, Take-Over. But, while The Avengers in its peak, the period it’s most remembered for, with Diana Rigg as Emma Peel alongside Patrick Macnee’s ever-present John Steed, seems too light and frivolous (delightfully so) to be analysed, Take-Over, it occurs to me from what I saw, has a chillingly accurate portrait of left-wing terrorists hoping to assassinate a bunch of politicians. Their motives hadn’t been explained yet and, from what I remember and from looking at synopses online, I don’t think they are ever made clear, but the psychological profile fits groups like the Baader-Meinhof gang.

Fenton Grenville, the ring-leader, is posh, cultured and arrogant. He is visibly piqued when beaten at a classical music trivia game by Steed. Circe, introduced as his niece, which may not be true (or not the whole truth) “works hard to be a character,” we are told (be a character, not to have character); certainly she acts like an annoying “aren’t I a craaazy free spirit” attention-seeker — when she isn’t operating on hostages to put bombs in their throats. She says she was expelled from medical school, but I find it hard to see how she got in, unless a rich/powerful relative pulled strings. Sexton wants to open a super-exclusive restaurant. Like Fenton and Circe, he seems to be quite posh. Lomax just seems to enjoy hurting people. This is a fairly accurate portrait of left-wing terrorism (snobbery and violence) even if not made explicit, and absolutely not what you would see on TV nowadays, where more conservative writers keep a low-profile. (Take-Over writer Terry Nation most famously created the Daleks for Doctor Who and was one of the most high-profile TV writers of his era).

So, maybe there are things to say about all kinds of cultural artifacts, however obscure, and ways to say them that are of interest, if I’m brave enough.

The other thing I have written a lot of in the past, and am at times tempted to write here, is more personal, reflective posts. These also work well (not just for me, for writers in general), but there’s a real risk of giving too much away, either literally, in terms of personal information, or ‘performing’ your life online instead of living it, or becoming ‘captured’ by your audience and writing/thinking/doing what they want/expect. I’d like to write about my first year of fatherhood, of being autistic and resisting the grievance oppressor/oppressed claims of the neurodivergence movement, about resilience and more.

I’d like to write about my favourite books too, less formal criticism and more what they mean to me. That’s probably a safer option, although, as few of my favourite books are unknown, perhaps less interesting and worthwhile.

It’s frustrating as I like to think about things, to actually think them through, and writing an essay is the best way of structuring thoughts, far better than just idly pondering. I have so little time for writing at the moment, so there’s a lot more I’d like to write than I actually can write, and a lot of time to think about what I should write, which probably results in navel-gazing like this.

I have something very different planned for later this week, so stay tuned for that!

1. Other than my wife and maybe Just plain Rivka.