How About This - the 11th month update

Year 1 is coming close to its end

For this first year of publishing

How About This

I’m doing a monthly update on how things are going. Month 11 has just ended, so here are some highlights of what’s been happening.

Photo by David Monje on Unsplash

By the Numbers

As I mentioned for the last 2 months, I’m no longer reporting the views metrics from Substack’s dashboards as they can be influenced by unusual events.

My subscriber count is 864 as of the end of the month, an increase of 44 subscribers from last month’s total of 820. Thank you! And many thanks to paid subscribers!

I have 54 Substack Recommendations - greatly appreciated!

By the Words

I published 4 posts in March, definitely one per week. I took a break from publishing interviews in March but I have two lined up for April. I’ll be sticking to publishing 1 - 2 posts per week for the foreseeable future - I really should update my About page…

Some of March’s posts were more experimental than normal, especially The Other Twenty-Five (a fun exercise of writing a piece without the use of a particular letter). Another post was a list of ideas to consider and another was a defense of business writing as a way to improve your overall writing skills.

I returned to my exploration of creative problem solving by examining the Creative Infrastructure of master magician Stewart James. I’ll continue my exploration of James’s methods in April.

By the Gut Feel

I’ve come to terms with being less prolific at

How About This

and I'm more open to playing around with different topics and formats. I'm less interested in conforming to any niche except the "fun and interesting to me" niche. Basically I want to keep doing this for at least another 19 years so I will adapt as needed.

Year One anniversary is almost here!

In May I’ll be celebrating the first anniversary of publishing this newsletter. Hard to believe! As it’s the end of a H.A.T. quarter I’ll be giving away a notebook to a lucky subscriber. And since it’s the end of the H.A.T. year, I’ll be giving away a second notebook! I’ll be giving away one Dingbats* Wildlife and one Leuchtuurm1917 notebook, so there will be two lucky winners! They are both hardcovered, A5 format notebooks.

Stay cool and stay interested, H.A.T.T.E.R.s!