Changing Things Up
Announcing a new name for my Substack, plus a couple new features
For the last few months, I’ve been thinking a lot about my writing and my online platform: what kind of writing do I want to be doing, how do I want to be seen in the world, what matters most to me. As I began reading more women writers on Substack, I thought about all the women writers I read back when my family had daily deliveries of The Washington Post. Most of the time I went straight to the Style section, reading everything from Ann Landers, Erma Bombeck, Anna Quindlen, Hints from Heloise, and Miss Manners. These women wrote fun, honest, informative, and thought-provoking content that Momcat and I enjoyed and often discussed.
Twenty years ago this spring, I started a blog called The Girl with Moxie1. I did it while working as an assistant editor at a B2B magazine, bored out of my mind with the writing & editing I was doing for them. On my blog I began writing content on all sorts of topics: work, relationships, love, dating, pop culture, astrology, Tarot, spirituality, personal growth. I kept it semi-secret, as some of my content was way more personal than I wanted to share with friends and family. But I’m not always good at keeping my own secrets, and the more people knew about the blog, the more nervous I got about writing on more controversial or sensitive topics2, because if I don’t feel validated or accepted, I tend to shut down. And with a name like The Girl with Moxie, where’s the actual moxie in stifling my voice?
As I thought about my writing more, and what I wanted to achieve, I reflected on a conversation with my friend Rimi* over breakfast a couple years ago.
“I want to be a columnist,” I said to her.
“Does that job even exist anymore?” she said to me.
“I don’t know, but I still want it,” I replied.
And the truth is, as so many newspapers, magazines, and digital media outlets get shut down or restructured, columnist gigs don’t really exist like they did back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, when I was a young reader and writer, dreaming of the days when I’d have a byline of my own. When I did get my own bylines, it was rare that I was writing the kind of content I really wanted to be known for. If I wanted to be a columnist, I was going to have to create that space for myself, somewhere, somehow.
As I’ve gotten older, and perhaps somewhat wiser, I have way more courage than I did twenty years ago, when I loved the idea of being a girl with moxie. I think this courage has a lot to do with the voice in my head screaming OH FUCK IT JUST DO THE DAMN THING ALREADY, and that voice has gotten progressively louder in the past 4-5 years.3 It’s the voice that also says, “You’re going to have to make your own path here”; “trust your gut”; and “the worst that could happen is nothing.”
With all of these things in mind, I’ve rebranded my Substack to A Life of Moxie. The tagline is “Essays, humor, and reflections from a Gen X woman writer” and that’s exactly what you’ll find here.
What’s staying:
Friday Bitch & Brag—this weekly round-up style post continues to be popular and is free to subscribers; the Corinne Channel at the end of each post is for paid subscribers and covers the media I’ve been consuming over the past week.
Tuesday Scribblings—I started this feature several months ago, but didn’t maintain it. Going forward, Tuesday Scribblings will be a freeform/stream-of-consciousness piece for paid subscribers only, and will be at least once a month.
What’s new:
Wednesday column—this post will be between 500-750 words (the approximate word count for an old-school newspaper column) and will cover everything from the latest headlines to more personal matters.
Some other possibilities I’m still considering—stay tuned.
This week you’ll see the new look starting with Friday Bitch & Brag, and the new features begin the following week. As before, names and some identifying details will be changed, there will be the occasional curse word4, and there will be photos of home-baked goods and cats.
I hope A Life of Moxie will become one of your favorite things to read every week, just as those woman writers & columnists were for me so long ago.
Corinne
The site still exists, and I’m in the process of redesigning the format.
My spirituality and studies in astrology, Tarot, and feng shui fall under this category.
I understand this voice is pretty common for many women once they reach their fifties.
Okay, maybe more than occasional. I have a potty mouth sometimes.