Don’t know if this is a real thing but I might be addicted to newsletters. Maybe it’s something about the format itself or it’s just I’m mostly following people I really enjoy reading pretty much everything they write. But there might be something more about it.
Something about the newsletters makes it more sincere, makes me want to read it without any interruption and with all focused on. Even some books can’t get that much attention from me.
My guess, it’s related to relationship newsletters creates between writer and the reader/follower. It’s not like a social network follow. I don’t want to miss any installment or any sentence. I asked the writer to send me these anytime they wrote something. And send it directly to me. I guess it feels more direct than anything else because we feel our inboxes are our most private zones online and inviting someone to access there anytime they want to share something with us feels different than anything else.
And it feels kind of free and open, like blogs. You can do anything you want, any way you want. No one can limit what you can do or kick you out just because you tried something. It makes people become more interested in newsletters because they think it’s something new (it’s not) and blogs are dead (it’s not).
I was experimenting with the newsletter format for some time in Turkish and one of my 2016 resolutions (which I kept in my notebook and, honestly, a bit lazy to turn it into a blog post) was use this format more actively. I want to see what can I do with this format. Also I really want to gain the habit of writing regularly and more (especially in English) so creating an English newsletter too seemed like a good idea.
If you can read Turkish, my regular newsletter called Tuhaf Gelecek is out every Sunday evening (according to Turkey’s timezone, GMT+2) and you can subscribe here: http://tinyletter.com/tuhafgelecek
And if you can read English, my English newsletter experiment Weird and Deadly Interesting is here: http://tinyletter.com/weirdanddeadlyinteresting Hoping to send the first episode in this month and hope to make it regular soon.
On the name “Weird and Deadly Interesting”: For some time, I was thinking about how to describe what I’m interested as a writer and couldn’t find any short description for it. I was not focused on couple topics that have marketable names. I’m always an interdiscipliner, needs a bit weird, after the really interesting and dangerous. I never liked splitting the world into pieces which everyone acts like they’re not touching each other. I wanted to see and write about the world, as a whole. And when I looked at the world with these eyes, this name describes what I see.
I first heard the “deadly interesting” from Bruce Sterling, at one of his talks. And it hit me like a lightning. Maybe it’s somehow related to where I live, where I’m looking the world from. But when I added this to weird, it really summed up the world from my eyes.
Anyway, if you’re interested in receiving my English newsletter you can click here and subscribe.
As a bonus, I want to recommend some of my favourite newsletters which definitely worth inviting them in to your inbox. With no particular order:
- Orbital Operations by Warren Ellis
- (De)Extinction Club by m1k3y
- Metafoundry by Deb Chachra
- Technoccult News by Damien Williams
- Ink Vault by Molly Crabapple
- Things That Have Caught My Attention by danhon
- MGG by Melissa Gira Grant
- Scott Smith’s newsletter
- Penny Red by Laurie Penny
- Exoskeletal by Exoskeleton
- Interdome Weekly Reports by Adam Rothstein
- Strange Transmission by StrangeTelemetry
- Klint Finley’s newsletter
- Fractal Interpolation by mediapathic
- Johannes Kleske’s newsletter
- Robin Sloan’s newsletter
If you have a newsletter or know a newsletter that you think I might be interested, feel free to recommend via email or just post a comment below.