the trouble with Substack metrics

or really any metric regarding yer art

You write a thing that came from a hole in your chest.

You know it isn’t anything close to perfect.

You press publish, against your inner critic’s judgment.

You sigh a relieved sigh and go to make tea, or something like it. Twenty-four hours later, Substack emails you your numbers,

a grade, if you like.

I don’t. That’s the trouble. The metrics are sometimes true, but never the truth. As my readers have kindly expressed, metrics do not measure how long someone sat still after reading your words, or who remembered a quote and shared it with their sister, partner, or friend. They are binary, numerical, and can rarely capture impact, emotion or hints of recognition. Still, we religiously check them.

Can I turn this feature off? A little bit? Although I consider myself a performer in many fun and necessary ways, writing as performance is not my ministry. I don't want to be at the mercy of some dashboard, and these days, must work hard to circumvent this.

Oh, I could just not care, I suppose. It’s not that metrics are evil; indeed, there’s something to be gained from knowing how specific ideas and essay-things land, if they do at all. I know metrics can be helpful. Some people thrive with the right data. But for some of us, those numbers don't inspire refinement; they inspire hesitation, self-doubt and the death of important risk. Though I feel the fear and do it anyway, I reckon I am no more immune or impervious than anyone else. Metrics are too easily mistaken for meaning. Am I only as good as my last email? If that’s the case, I’m (regularly) screwed.

Some of us are out here trying to keep it raw and from the heart, a little unkempt, and wild,

and to let it be,

ungraded and unstarred.

The real metrics, I guess, live in the quiet; in those who don't comment but read, and the ones who show up at your little event in a bookshop in a town you’ve never been to before and say, “I’ve been following you since the beginning.” (You melt my heart each time you come out of the house to see me. Thank you. It isn’t a given, and each time I’m overwhelmed with gratitude.) I keep saying I’m going to do more meet-and-greets / readings / speakery things this year and next, and if you’d like me to come and do my thing where you are, please do reach out. I’m just an email away.

Back to the platform. I want to build a rebellion here, a library of feeling, a warmhouse of language, and, as I have said, must take care not to internalise spikes or slumps. I am not my open rate, or the subscribe or unsubscribe list, but could be the reason someone decides to start a newsletter, or a book, or a piece of art. This is why I show up each week. (Well, that and it buys my groceries). Some people ask me how I manage to show up twice a week, like what new is there to say?

Well, look.

As long as the sky is frost, then lilac-peach, and the roses grow, bloom and scent-happy, and the moon is a thumbnail

to a globe, to a sliver of silvergold,

and there are new, surprising, off-kilter people to see

and be thrilled or repulsed by, and dreamybad places to go,

and as long as the devilsystems tell on themselves and show their asses and awful teeth, and the devilsystems break something in me and bring forth new terrible truth and the seasons rise, and the trees green-green, tall and insistent

and we change and trip over and change some more,

each lesson is old as the world and always, always new. There are new thoughts, desperate challenges, and drumbeat affirmations that we need to know and unknow, ten times a year.

If you’re reading this, thank you. Whether you’ve been rocking with me from the beginning or here as of yesterday, it means more than any graph.

Love, Yrsa.