#00: So, if I am a writer

What am I supposed to be writing?

Six weeks ago, I announced I was winding down Pass It On without a clear idea of what was coming next. I knew I wanted to write fewer, better pieces on a wider range of topics. But since I wasn’t sure how to get there, I decided to take some time out and collect my thoughts.

TL;DR: this experiment yielded poor results. It turns out that publishing deadlines are excellent forcing functions. Who knew?

So here I am. Happy 2025 to you all!

Full disclosure: I still don’t know what this ‘new’ Substack is supposed to be about. What I do know is that the purpose of the work will only reveal itself by my doing the work. As someone who likes being in control, this is uncomfortable territory. But since I have lost count of the writers who describe their creative process this way, I am trying to trust in the wisdom. My dad told me it took David Bowie over twenty years of making music to realise that his life’s work—his creative mission—was to change the vocabulary of rock and roll. His music revealed its ultimate purpose over time.¹

I have always hated labels. ‘Writer,’ ‘marketer,’ ‘creator,’ ‘strategist,’ ‘storyteller’—something about the assertiveness of the self-classification just makes me cringe. I prefer the “forget the noun, do the verb” philosophy: focus on the action rather than the identity associated with the action.² Still, labels are a useful shorthand for attracting an audience. If Pass It On is no longer a space designed for Tech and Non-profits, what is it?

Counter to conventional business wisdom, I don’t think the answer lies in better understanding my audience. I think it lies in being more in tune with myself. On this topic, I stumbled on some good advice from Henrik Karlsson:

“What would have made me jump off my chair if I had read it six months ago. […] If you have figured out something that made you ecstatic, this is what you should write.”³

Inspired by Henrik’s prompt, I resolved to relaunch Pass It On with a new “jump-off-my-chair” style essay. I started brainstorming new newsletter names, even potential logos. But as the weeks passed and nothing seemed to click, I got disheartened.

Until, as if by magic, Jeanette Winterson came to my rescue:

I GUESS IT'S TIME TO COME BACK

Two days after Trump’s inauguration, after a two plus years Substack hiatus, Jeanette returned to the platform. And she did so with a vengeance:

“So for me, when I look at the mean angry faces of the Trump Lumps, I see the thing I fear most. Failure of imagination.

[…]

So, I am back because I want to talk about what I believe in. And sure,I believe in social justice and fair opportunity. We have to work for practical change wherever we can. There’s more though, and it matters.

If we can’t keep our imagination alive we will die.”

Jeanette is an important figure to me. Some back story:

I work for an AI company, and as a non-technical person with a humanities background, I’ve struggled to make sense of AI’s rapid advancements. Turns out, Jeanette felt the same way already in 2021, and the result was a beautiful collection of essays about AI’s potential impact on humanity.⁴ In early 2024, this essay collection became my guidebook. Finally, I had found someone who could explain AI in my language. When it came to choosing speakers for our company’s annual AI Summit in May, there was no doubt in my mind: Jeanette had to speak, and she needed to have the closing keynote.

To my delight, Jeanette accepted. And to my even greater delight, she absolutely brought the house down. ⁵

After the conference, we gathered for a celebratory dinner at my company’s office. I asked Jeanette why she had stopped writing on Substack, and she explained she’d grown tired of the expectation to keep producing fresh content. We talked about the tech industry’s echo chambers, how it needs to embrace more diverse perspectives. She told me to keep writing for that reason alone.

Message reads: “To Lauren, Thank you for inviting me. It was brave! Jeanette. You know where to find me if so.”

So here I am, nine months on. Finally acting on Jeanette’s words. It’s a broad framing for this newsletter, but it’s one I believe in. Alongside a few others:

Write to be a producer of meaning rather than solely a consumer of meaning.⁶

Write to give space to the awe and enthusiasm you feel for the world around you.

Write to try and prove yourself wrong rather than prove yourself right.⁷

Write to uphold the feminist thinking that is under threat.

Write to make sense of the many things you don’t understand.

Write to remain a person who can write.⁸

Write to bring yourself into being.

Write to bear witness.

Write to feel alive.

Write to hope.

Write to rage.⁹

Write to change.

If this isn’t what you signed up to Pass It On for, that’s fine—feel free to unsubscribe! No hard feelings. But if you’re up for sticking around, I’ll do my best to stay true to these principles in the hope it takes us somewhere interesting.

With that, I’ll leave you with an excerpt from ‘The Writer on, and at, Her Work’ by American author Ursula K. Le Guin.¹⁰ Her words say more on this topic than I could ever hope to express.

Her work, I really think her work

isn’t fighting, isn’t winning,

isn’t being the Earth, isn’t being the Moon,

Her work, I really think her work

is finding what her real work is

and doing it,

her work, her own work,

her being human,

her being in the world.

So, if I am

a writer, my work

is words. Unwritten letters.

Words are my way of being

human, woman, me.

Word is the whorl that spins me,

the shuttle thrown through the warp of years

to weave a life, the hand

that shapes to use, to grace.

Word is my tooth,

my wing.

Word is my wisdom.

I am a bundle of letters

in a secret drawer

in an old desk.

What is in the letters?

What do they say?

Let’s find out.

See you in a month,

Lauren

1. Not trying to pitch myself as the next Bowie, don’t worry. I do have some grip on reality.

2. Austin Kleon coined this in ‘The noun and the verb.’

3. This quote is from

Henrik Karlsson

’s inimitably titled post called, ‘A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox.’

4.

jeanette winterson

’s essay collection is called 12 Bytes: How artificial intelligence will change the way we live and love.

5. Here is Jeanette’s closing keynote from the Summit.

6. Inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s wise words in ‘How to Be a Writer: 10 Tips from Rebecca Solnit.’

7. Here, I’m hoping to take a leaf out of Holden Karnofsky’s ‘Learning by Writing,’ which I discovered through one of Henrik’s posts.

8. Inspired by Paul Graham’s recent ‘Writes and Write-Nots’, in which he explores AI’s impact on writing.

9. Write to rage is inspired by Laura Deming’s ‘The Rage of Research,’ another tip from Henrik…

10. I discovered ‘The Writer on, and at, Her Work’ while reading Ursula’s essay collection, The Wave in the Mind last Christmas. It is the final piece in the essay collection and it floors me every single time I read it.