How To Write a Newsletter
Step One: Eat the good cheese.
Last week, an editor I haven’t written for in many years reached out. She has new funding for some big investigative projects and wanted to know if I would pitch them. Even three years ago, the answer would have been an immediate yes. I wrote some of the best and hardest stories of my magazine career for this editor—who is brilliant and one of my favorites—and if I’m being honest, there’s a little piece of my heart that will always wonder where else my career might have gone as an investigative journalist. It’s a beat I consciously started walking away from a decade ago, after my first daughter was born. There was a story I still think about sometimes, that I had to turn down because it involved a level of travel that I could not fathom as the new mom of a medically complex child.
That travel might be possible now, but my answer was still no thanks. Because publishing has changed too much. The all-consuming nature of investigative reporting always made it an extremely tenuous business proposition (I learned fast that you could just never think about how many hours a piece had taken when you got the paycheck!). But it’s both more important and less sustainable than ever. And because I now have a full-time job, which is writing this newsletter.
Which, by the way, hit a cool milestone a few weeks ago: There are now over 40,000 Burnt Toasties! (Actually over 42,000.) I continue to be amazed and grateful for how this community has grown, especially this year. And yet, I also continue to meet people (not that editor, who was lovely about it!) who can’t quite believe that writing a newsletter is a full-time job.
I suspect there is a gendered component to this: Women writers are already taken less seriously. Women who write about bodies and parenting and life are taken even less seriously. When I used to be able to introduce myself as the author of a parenting column for the New York Times, or a regular contributor to Scientific American, I got to borrow a little male gravitas and credibility. When I now say I write a newsletter called Burnt Toast, people often look worried for me. And yet I also receive emails every week from other writers wanting to start a newsletter, and hoping I’ll explain how to do it, and that this explanation will reveal it to be very easy and instantly lucrative.
To be honest, it’s a little annoying in both directions. This is a real, full-time job, and as
wrote recently, I’m often out-earning the people not believing that fact. That means, as with all jobs, it’s not particularly easy to just jump in and do well. I believe fervently that we all have a story to tell, but—I do not believe everyone can or should be a professional writer, or that every professional writer can or should run a newsletter. So! I thought it might be interesting to talk a little more about what newsletter-as-job really looks like. Here’s a little diary I kept last week, of how I spent my work days.For reference: I start my official work day between 9 and 10am, though I’ve often done an hour of early morning email or social media work before my kids get up a little before 7am. (In between I’m helping start their day, fitting in my own workout, dealing with the dog, tidying up the house, and grabbing a shower.) I try to get a big burst of writing done in the morning (you’ll see below how that goes), then take a lunch break, and then work on the podcast and all the other stuff in the afternoons. Two days a week (this fall it’s Mondays and Wednesdays) I work until 5pm. The rest of the time I wrap up at 3:30pm just before my kids get home. In a perfect world, I’d be truly DONE then. In the real world, I’m often at least keeping an eye towards email, texts, newsletter stats (open rate, engagement, subscriber tallies) and Instagram the rest of the day. Fridays are reserved for admin, appointments, and running errands.
A Week In the Life of Burnt Toast
Monday
Today is Indigenous People’s Day but my kids are with their dad until dinner, so I end up treating it like a pretty normal work day because Mondays are when I get the Tuesday Essay ready to go. This one is a Burnt Toast Guide; I drafted it last week and
has already formatted and proof-read it and put her edit notes into Substack, so I go in and futz around with the draft for another two hours until I feel *fairly* sure I’ve got it close to right.I have a pretty specific vision for guides: I want them to be interesting to read if you’re already pretty steeped in these issues, but even more, I want them to be welcoming and helpful to someone brand new to the conversation. I catch a bunch of places where I’ve rushed through the point too quickly and can break it down a little more slowly.
I also work on the email headers. This is that little italics part that comes at the top of every email you get from me and yes I recycle them, sort of, but I also try to make them new every time. This matters for the free list, because this is where I make the main “hey maybe you should subscribe today!” pitch, and it matters for the paid list because I just don’t want to be boring.
PS. Hey maybe you should subscribe today. I proofread once more and schedule the post.I eat lunch, which today is leftover sushi from the weekend’s takeout order.
Next, I email with Corinne and Tommy Harron, our podcast engineer, to confirm the plan for next week’s podcast (we’re always working on several episodes at once, in various states of production) and then start planning for the episode Corinne and I will be recording tomorrow (your November Indulgence Gospel!). This means making sure I’ve put the link for your questions in the Tuesday newsletter and doing my Instagram Stories, which on Mondays usually involves a little promo for what’s coming up that week on the newsletter and any request for comment or questions like this. Corinne and I also text about logistics for our recording and what we want to cover in the Extra Butter episode that we’ll record in the same session.
I catch up on email generally/perpetually, which includes reviewing various media requests that have come in. I’m doing far fewer of those these days now that I’m six months out from book launch, but I put one on the calendar. Corinne sends me two podcast transcripts to edit and I make a note to tackle those Wednesday.
I also spend some time staring at my editorial calendar, where I map out everything the newsletter is doing several months in advance. We’re working through a backlog of (amazing!) podcast interviews right now, but it will be time to start booking new guests in a few weeks. And I need to decide which bigger reported stories I want to work on next and make plans to actually start them.
And I text with a bunch of my Substack co-workers (we have a group chat) about how to handle tricky comments and reader emails. Love you all! Just not (a very few of) you.
Tuesday
The main thing I have to do on Tuesdays is start writing the next week’s essay. Which means most of what I do on Tuesday mornings is eat peanut butter toast, text with my Substack co-workers, catch up on email and anything else that can be done instead of writing. Why do I need a 90 minute brain warm-up process to get to the main event? I do not know but I’ve stopped questioning this truth about myself and just try to make that time generally productive in other ways.
One thing I do during this should-be-writing time is write the email that will get sent out tomorrow night at 9pm letting folks know the Extra Butter live chat is starting. Which is technically writing and thus, feels very virtuous. I also see an NPR essay that needs to go in the Friday links, which reminds me to start a draft for that post and think about what else I read over the weekend that should be in there.
I also hop into Instagram and our Google Form to pull out questions for Indulgence Gospel and spend a good chunk of time planning the flow of that episode. Which question should go before the paywall? Which questions require a little upfront research or can I trust that Corinne will have thoughts on the best plus size plaid jackets? (I can trust.)
Then I discuss some marketing strategy stuff (paywall placement, what do we think of the newest Substack Boost idea, how to manage live AMAs) with the Substack co-workers. I also spend a good chunk of time replying to your comments on the Tuesday essay —truly one of my favorite parts of this job, but also, admittedly, the kind of task that can derail other productivity fast.
Finally I write for about 90 minutes (this essay you are reading right now!), then stop to grab some lunch. (Today: Leftover chicken and the cheese on a salad, plus sourdough toast with more cheese on top.) After lunch, Corinne and I hope on Zoom to record Indulgence Gospel and what ends up being two Extra Butter podcast episodes. They are all very fun and don’t worry, we talk a lot about pants. We finish just a few minutes before my kids’ bus pulls up, which always feels like a minor miracle.
Wednesday
Today I work on three different podcast episodes. First up: Editing the transcript of next week’s episode so Tommy can edit the audio. This process started with Tommy sending Corinne a raw audio file of the episode, which she uses to make a very rough transcript using Otter.ai. She then spends a ton of time making that legible (true hero’s work because AI transcription is not replacing humans anytime soon let me tell you!!!) and making the first pass of edits.
I then take her edit and add my own cuts because she tends to be too nice about how much I talk and I need to cut it all way down so my mother doesn’t text after she listens, to tell me how often I said “you know.” Once I finish, we pass it back to Tommy who will use this edited transcript to make a finished audio episode.
Next I repeat the same process with the transcript for our first Extra Butter podcast episode, which should be ready for you next week (ah!!). Then I start working on tomorrow’s podcast episode. Tommy has sent the finished audio for me to review, and Corinne has put our edited draft of the transcript (complete with all the necessary links and images) into Substack. I go through and double-check for weird AI typos, but mostly just get to take an editorial eye to it and think about how the transcript reads. Where should we cut or condense so it flows better? What key quotes need to be in bold? How should we break up big blocks of text so they are more fun to read on a laptop or phone?
As I’m doing all of this, the phone rings. It’s my kids’ dad, who drank green juice he ordered off the Internet and is now throwing up. (I have consent to share that detail because Dan recognizes its value as a teachable moment/diet culture critique.) I microwave some leftover pasta to inhale for lunch. I’m going to have to cover his afternoon with the kids, which means ending up work day three hours early in order to stop by his place to pick up their stuff, then pick them up at school and get my older kid ready for her school play audition. I manage to get the episode edited and scheduled for tomorrow, but have to leave my email a hot mess. #WorkingParentLife!
I handle the afternoon (FYI, elementary school auditions cause a lot of VERY BIG FEELINGS) plus most of their homework and dinner and Dan feels recovered enough to come over at 6:30pm to handle the rest of homework and bedtime. He also manages to run a kid-related errand I’d planned to run this afternoon, #coparentingwin! I go grab another hour of work time to double check a few things about tomorrow’s episode, and start working on responses to the AMA questions that have come in early. I record a little promo for the live chat to put up on Instagram and power through feelings about the state of my end-of-day hair. Then I go get into my PJs and pour a big glass of wine and get the good chocolate because today was a lot! At 8pm I hop on for our chat. It is very fun. I sign off at 9pm, hang out for a bit with a kid who is still awake (oops), and go to bed.
Thursday
For almost as long as I’ve been a freelance writer, I have always tried to have Thursday night deadlines (when I wrote for other editors, I told them it was Friday morning) because the SHEER FREEDOM of being able to not work Fridays is so exquisite and helpful, especially post kids. It is one of the great luxuries of my life.
That said, this means my stress level on Thursday morning about The Tuesday Essay Not Being Written Yet is always very high. Because it’s never fully written yet, and this week even less so because I lost some of Wednesday to family business. So of course I spend the first two hours of Thursday writing the Friday Thread instead — which also needs to get written (to go live Friday morning) but is supposed to be fast and easy except lately I’ve been turning them into mini-essays. You’re welcome/I’m sorry.
I get Friday set, then spend a little time on admin.
and I are finally almost ready to tell you about our forthcoming collaboration and I will say no more now but just know I answered a very exciting email about it!!! Then I grab an early lunch (more leftover chicken on salad, this time plus leftover pesto pasta and honestly none of that matters, it’s all just a base layer for the cheese.) because I have therapy during lunch time, immediately followed by a podcast recording.This isn’t for my own podcast — it’s an interview long-scheduled related to the book launch. And it’s a very fun one but giving up that block of time on one of my ‘early’ days (that bus is coming back at 3:40!) confirms for me that I’m right to be mostly on a media hiatus right now. (Had I written this “week in the life of” piece back in the thick of book launch mode, several days would have been nothing but podcast interviews. I love doing podcast interviews! And they make it hard to do my real job!)
I hop off Riverside (a recording platform used by many a podcast and hated by my Chrome browser so it always glitches, which is fun!) and immediately dive into finishing up this piece until the bus pulls up. Then I send it to Corinne with a bunch of panicked questions about whether anybody wants to read this, which I bet is very fun for her. I spend the rest of the afternoon making cupcakes with my kids (from a mix, all the sprinkles), while periodically checking to see how today’s podcast episode is doing, and sort of mentally rewriting this whole essay in the back of my head.
Friday
Today is my younger daughter’s sixth birthday so thank goodness the Tuesday essay got done on Thursday (except this part, ha). The usual pre-work day morning routine is taken over with bringing her ice cream in bed (our family birthday tradition) and then presents and general chaos. After the kids leave for school, I catch up on email (which, I’ve gradually accepted is like laundry, and impossible to ever “finish”) and fill out a mountain of forms for a kid’s upcoming medical appointments. I also pay outstanding invoices for contractors, and catch up on podcast guest honorariums and comp subscription requests — two important things your paid subscriptions make possible!
(If you’d like a comp, email me or Corinne at virginiasolesmith.assistant@gmail.com anytime. We give them out no questions asked.)
I also read most of the comments coming in on the Friday Thread, though Corinne is now your main Friday comment moderator. (But I love hearing from you and my audio book TBR list is getting long!)
Then I spend way too long over-thinking what to wear to bring cupcakes into the birthday girl’s classroom (NOBODY CARES/I wore jeans and my new Nisolo boots that fit even though they were final sale phew). I bring the cupcakes and read a story to the class. Every first grader only actually cares if you remember who they are from that time you met them at some kid’s birthday party. Then I spend 30 minutes trying and failing to finish one errand (small town parkinggg) before I head back to to the school for pickup. I’m early and get to chat with friends on the blacktop. My email is already a mess again, I randomly remember that I was supposed to call my book editor back about something a week ago, and I’ve dropped the ball on Instagram promotion for the newsletter. But nobody wants to get any of that done on a Friday afternoon anyway. Good luck Next Week Virginia!
Burnt Toast Office Supplies
Most of my career has only ever required a laptop and a good Internet connection. But as I’ve expanded into podcasting and into being a 42-year-old with lower back issues, I’ve also expanded my list of home office must haves. Here’s what makes my work-from-home life possible, or at least, cuter and comfier.
