Community
Field Notes
The fortnightly letter, written since 2019. Four thousand eight hundred readers, no sponsors, no growth plan.
In March 2019 a bookbinder asked me for the notes I had taken in her workshop, and I realised I did not have any I would want anyone to read. I wrote her a letter instead. Then I wrote one to eleven other people, and it has gone out every other Sunday since.
The problem
Everything I was reading about craft was either a how-to or an elegy. Nobody was writing about the ordinary middle of it: the fortnight where you are just turning up. That is most of the work and almost none of the writing about it.
What we did
Three rules, set in the first month and never changed:
- One idea, one thing I read, one thing I made. Nothing else in the letter.
- About six hundred words. If it needs more it is an essay, and it goes on the site instead.
- No advertising, no sponsorship, no affiliate links, ever.
What came of it
Four thousand eight hundred and twelve people now read it, which I have never once tried to increase. It pays for The Bench Award outright. Twice a year someone writes back to say they have started their own, which is the only growth metric I care about.
It turns out the smallest thing I make is the one that funds everything else.
