Reading · The Monday Pick Me Up

Greetings from Brooklyn. It’s me, Jen Glantz.

In next week’s newsletter, I want to answer any/all questions you have for me! SO ask me anything (really anythingggg!!!!) and i’ll kick off August by opening up my soul and secrets and sharing them here with you.

Ask Jen Anything

I think one of the most interesting things about this little Monday newsletter is that I’ve been writing it for ten years. Every single Monday. It’s rare for me to miss one.

I had to stop for two weeks when I had baaaaad vertigo last year and couldn’t eyeball a screen. When I was pregnant, I wrote three months’ worth of Monday newsletters ahead of time and scheduled them to go out so I could give myself a tiny (unpaid) maternity leave.

Perhaps the worst example of me trying to make sure I always showed up in your inbox happened in February 2020. I was desperate to waste away the 17-hour flight home from Australia so I didn’t spiral into one panic attack after the other about spending soooooo much time flying over an ocean. I decided to write all my March newsletters on the plane and schedule them to go out. Set it and LITERALLY forget it.

Then COVID happened and we all went into panic mode and truly the very last thing I was thinking about were those scheduled newsletters.

Which is why I woke up one morning to more than 100 emails from longtime subscribers telling me they’d never read my newsletter again. It was either headed to their spam folder forever, or they were unsubscribing and adding my name to a mental list called Forever Canceled.

You might be wondering whyyyyyyyy.

On that airplane in February, I had this idea to write about stepping out of your comfort zone.

The subject line happened to be:

Go Outside

IN EARLY FEBRUARY, that sounded inspiring, helpful, bold! But when the newsletter went out, almost 8 weeks later, people were told to not go outside!!! To stay home!!!! It was awwwwwwffffffullllllllll. So awful.

A mistake that really no one would believe or understand.

I spent that whole morning lying in bed, mourning this mistake. So mannnnny dear readers were mad at me. I apologized endlessly but really it didn’t matter. It was just awful.

I still want to tell anyone who remembers that how freaking sorry I am…

It’s been yeaaaaars since that happened. I don’t schedule my newsletter anymore (except for my little maternity leave in 2023). I write them in real-time - every single week.

Here’s what putting together the newsletter every week looks like.

The newsletter goes out at 6 a.m. on Monday, and then I don’t think about it again until Wednesday. I let it breathe. I read your replies, see who clicked the little heart up top, answer comments, and eaggggerly write back to anyone who hits reply to chat.

Wednesday is when I start with the blank page. I add in my recommendation section and tip for the week. I leave the draft open. I don’t write anything else.

Thursday is when I realllly get started, but I rarely write a single word. Instead, I walk around with invisible binoculars, looking for something interesting, relatable, or as weird as the ingredients in I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter. If an idea shows up, which honestly only happens about 25% of the time, I start writing it in my head, in the shower, while walking around, and then frantically scribble it down before it disappears.

Fridays are hit or miss because they’re usually laptop-free Gemma days. 15% of the time, I’ll write a little bit during her nap and get a very rough draft onto the the page. It usually has about a thousand spelling mistakes and sounds like someone trying to have a conversation before their first cup of coffee. You can’t expect the first draft of anything to be a thrill. It’s like getting dressed. First you have to cover your private parts (boring), then it gets a little more interesting when you pick an outfit, but the real thrill comes when you add the strawberry earrings or a necklace with a rare precious stone or the handbag in the shape of butter.

Saturday afternoon, while Gemma naps, I open it again. Sometimes I throw the whole thing away because the idea doesn’t feel alive anymore. Sometimes I shake the words around like glitter and see where they land. Every week I tell myself I’ll finish by 4 p.m.

I never do.

Sunday is usually when everything comes together or starts from scratch. About half the time, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday didn’t happen the way I’d planned, so Sunday begins with a blank page. I write for an hour, come back while Gemma eats dinner, and sometimes open it one last time around 11 p.m. after she’s asleep. That’s when I cut things, add things, rearrange things, and quietly hope this isn’t just a doggy bag full of leftover words that’s about to land in thousands of inboxes.

Then Monday morning rolls around. About 15% of the time, I wake up at 5:45 a.m. remembering one last thing I need to fix before I hit send.

And I hope you read it :) I’m always so grateful when you do.

I think consistency has a lot less to do with discipline than people think. I think you simply have to want the thing more than at least three or four other things competing for your attention. This newsletter has always been the love of my life. Of course there are weeks when I think, I have absolutely nothing to say. But most weeks, I can’t wait to sit down and write.

It also gets easier. Some weeks I spend all seven days collecting little moments. Other weeks, Sunday is my starting line. But after ten years, showing up doesn’t feel quite as scary because I’ve practiced it so many times.

I also think the biggest secret is that I’ve never treated this place like a business. I don’t make any money from this thing. I don’t obsess over subscriber counts. I don’t watch who left or refresh analytics all day. If we collect every little data point and every piece of feedback, we suddenly have a hundred reasons to stop. I’d rather spend that energy trying to make something worth reading.

Thank you for giving me a reason to keep writing ❤️ I really do love you.

Take care of yourself this week (ilysm).

Jen Glantz

Ps. Last week’s blog on copying everyone around me.

👋 A hundred reasons to stop

Comments