Essay Club: January'25
Loop #4
Excited to kick off 2025!—I just went through all the December posts; our publishing rate went up to 57%. Looking forward to reading through everything this weekend. Hope we can keep up the momentum, and that Essay Club can help everyone sustain new writing habits through the year.
Substack Chat
Our chat is live! Link here. The old message has been footnoted.1
Below you’ll find meeting times, streaks, and who’s working on what. You’ll also find a link to this page in all the calendar events. I’ve tagged everyone who filled out our Google Form, but consider subscribing to the “Essay Club” section in your account settings to ensure you get these each month.
Meeting times:
Look out for calendar invites. I recommended you bring a draft for live feedback (these events work as a good forcing function). I can also (a) pair up people for discussion, and (b) create a focused writing room. Make sure you join the calls before :10 after!
Live feedback exchanges in January:
Friday, 1/3 at 3pm ET;
Friday, 1/10 at 3pm ET;
Tuesday, 1/14 at 7pm ET;
Friday, 1/17 at 3pm ET;
Friday, 1/24 at 3pm ET;
Tuesday, 1/28 at 7pm ET;
Friday, 1/31 at 3 pm ET.
Published in November ‘24:
This is where I’ll keep a running list of who published last loop. You’ll see a number next to each name which denotes a streak. You get +1.00 for reaching the goal you set out on time, +0.75 if you’re late, and +0.50 if you veered from your goal but still published an essay (with a public URL). If you miss a month, your counter resets to 0. If you publish your last month’s goal late, DM me and I can update below.
Streaks:
Becky Isjwara (3.0): How I Found My Book Editor;
Randall Bennington (2.5): Lying Eyes Part 2;
Sam Woods (2.25): Your Perspective is a Power Law;
Charlie D. Becker (2.0): You’re not Simon Sarris;
Erin Nolan (1.5): Expressive Journaling with Erin Nolan;
Michael Dean (1.5): On writing code vs. prose;
Karena de Souza (1.0): Through the Eyes of a Child;
Jeff Giesea (1.0): Yep, I’m almost 50;
Gairik Sachdeva (1.0): Timeless Beauty Lost to Time: Art of the Glass Flowers;
Kevin Hsu (1.0): Curiosity is an antidote to getting old (mentally);
Nat Lee (1.0): Uneasy, unearthed truths;
Coco Liu (1.0): An eleven year journal, on crossing thresholds in life;
Rebecca Jones (1.0): Beyond the Price Tag: Arts True Worth;
Rachel Parker (1.0): Through the Glass;
Chenshu Zhou (1.0): Making my GPT not so “basic”;
Saalik (1.0): Why I’m building a business with my family;
Rose (1.0): A review of the writing course that started this - Holiday Special;
Paz Pisarski (1.0): Be a Great Coachee: 10 Tips to Get the Most from 1:1 Coaching;
Brigitte Katz (1.0): A loveletter to my typewriter(s);
Dolores Lucero (1.0): Signs of Humanity #1: Thank you UPS Store Guy;
Camilo Moreno-Salamanca (1.0): The Prophecy: The Burden of Potential;
Lily (1.0): Rejecting Elite Kids;
Maksim (1.0): Great work does not speak for itself;
Matthew Beebe (1.0): Getting lost in a van with the greatest rock band you never heard of;
Mark Connolley-Mendoza (0.5): My Cold is a Brutal Editor;
Susanna Devlin (0.5): Three lessons I learned from going solo;
Anu Pandey (0.5): Finding the divine: growing up in a (Hindu) cult in America;
Our publishing score: 57% (27 of 47 published / up from 53%).
Our weighted score: 49% (23.25 of 47 / up from 43%).
Our list is sorted by (a) streak, and then (b) timestamp of form submission.
Publishing in January ‘25:
Everything below this point is locked for the members of Essay Club.