I have recently begun writing articles on Substack.

Substack logo

Those articles are much like the articles I write here, but they have a wider, built-in audience.  I have never made the effort to drum up readership here, and as a result, this site is mostly a forgotten breadcrumb on the Internet.

This is not a complaint.  When I first began the Music For A New Age web site, my main purpose in doing so was to learn and implement HTML.  As the years passed, the site morphed into what is seen today:  A WordPress blog site.

Using the site as a “sandbox” has allowed me to employ it as a development platform.  I’ve created a “pseudo-forum” as a proof-of-concept (which was not accepted by my then-employer), a storage mechanism for files and data I could access anywhere an Internet connection existed, an exploration of cascading style sheets (CSS), which is now the landing page at https://www.mfna.org.

My Substack is where I am actively developing my writing skills.  In my opinion, the writing tools are less flexible than are WordPress’s, but the main point of my doing so is that I get readers without having to do any promotion.  Thus, I can improve my writing, and the feedback I receive helps me do so.

There is a bit of a concern I have.  Substack has numerous categories one can scroll through, search, and “silo” articles.  I have not found a way to categorize my articles there as I can here.  My as-yet-unproven sense is that authors who stick to a specific category get more readers.  One of the writers I follow, Julie Kelly, an investigative reporter, writes exclusively about politics.  I have neither the expertise nor the discipline to always write on a single topic.  I have multiple interests, and write about what I know, what I’ve seen, what I’ve experienced and what I I wish for.

So, my Substack isn’t replacing this site.  In the long run, perhaps it will make my writing here better.