2026 Reader Survey

Some Sayable housekeeping and a personal message from me to you

As many of you are doing as we catapult into this new year, I am taking stock of various parts of my life. I don’t have a strong resistance to resolutions or intentions, and actually find them helpful for my personality. I’m not someone who carries a lot of shame for failing to keep a resolution or who can’t meet myself in the mirror when I’ve failed to meet a goal. I have other personality quirks but fearing failure isn’t one of them. This is a good byproduct of being someone with a thousand hobbies and interests. I’m never bored, I have plenty to do, and I’m not ashamed to switch things up if something’s not working for me.¹

While I want Sayable to work for you, it has to work for me first. And as I took stock of 2025 (and really 2024 as well, since last January was the first in more than a decade that I hardly took stock at all—I had the flu for five weeks), I realized there are some things that just don’t work for me here any more and I want to shift as we go into the foreseeable future.

Okay deep breath:

TLDR: Take the 2026 Sayable Survey Here, please. Whether you’re a free, paid, or comped reader, doesn’t matter. I want to hear from ALLLL of you 👇🏼

Now the nitty-gritty for the ones who care:

Paid Memberships: As it is now, paid subscribers are loosely promised monthly zooms, bi-annual book-clubs, link loves, and lots of other nice perks (like first to hear new news, private posts, commenting privileges, and for founding members, a copy of my newest book in the year it releases with a personal card from me to you).

I have absolutely zero qualms about having a paid membership tier on Sayable (You can read why here). Some people see the paid membership as a way of having access to paid posts, others see it as a way of merely supporting me as a writer, regardless of my output here or the perks I offer. I prefer to have readers who fall into the latter category because I don’t view any one piece here a mere supply of whatever it provides. I view the work here as a holistic thing, nothing standalone. If you pay for one piece, you’re only getting 1/1000ths of the story. I reject that model of consumption in most of my life and I hope you find ways to reject it as well. This is one reason why I offer so many complementary subscriptions AND why I offer such a low subscription cost, period. I would rather have less money and you have more access, than to have more money and my readers be more piecemeal and consumeristic.

“If you’d rather that,” you might say, “then why not be entirely free?” Glad you asked. Because I value true engagement and the ability to keep out trolls or those who have absolutely no buy-in (even if it’s merely the cost of asking me for a comped subscription—that takes a lot of humility and therefore I see it as buy-in), paid and/or comped subscriptions solves that problem. And, I’m not going to lie to you, your subscription provides me enough salary that I can continue to tweak this novel. It’s not a lot of money, but it’s enough to keep us afloat while I write. (PS. Thank you for that. Like, seriously, thank you for that.)

In that vein, I’m extending the 50% off a year of Sayable I offered in December as a way to put my money where my mouth is👇🏼

Monthly Zooms: I realized last year with novel writing that the monthly zooms fell totally apart. I just couldn’t keep up with them and find myself with a lack of desire to continue them. It’s mostly philosophical and less anything else. I just don’t want to be seen as an authority of a lot of the stuff that we talked about in those zooms. They were mostly pretty chatty spaces, but I just feel uncomfortable with the whole idea these days. At least for the time being, we’re going to nix these.

Book Club: I have really loved the book clubs we’ve done in the past. The conversations are always warm and personable, and I love the repetition of people who show up at them. I’ve gotten to know a handful of you quite well through them! That said, we often have over a hundred+ people sign up for them, each paying the $7 for the extra work I do for them, and then only about 12-20 show up regularly. That says to me that either, they’re not very good book clubs and people aren’t actually interested OR people are very interested but life catches up with them. Whatever the reason, I need to consider the amount of work I put into them (high) as well as the cost for you (mid), and the benefit it’s offering to both you and me (low, it seems). I’m not sure it’s a perk that, on the whole, is worth keeping for paid subscribers.

Link Loves: I’ve historically really loved the round-ups of links that I’ve tried to do monthly. However, I think in the past I viewed them more as “Here, let me do the work of mining or milling for the best bits and then share them with you,” and now, in the year of our Lord 2026, we are absolutely glutted with information, links, and content. I’m not sure it’s serving me or you to continue to do that as I have…unless the majority of you still find it helpful and/or enjoyable. I am constantly saving links as I read things online. I’m also constantly adding things to my Favorite Things list on my Notes App. I’m not going to stop doing that, it’s a way for me to remember and cite what I’ve read, watched, heard, or otherwise. But I am wondering if it’s a perk you want to continue to receive—or perhaps if we can tweak the delivery of it somehow.²

Other tidbits: I’m still keeping commenting privileges almost entirely behind the paid tier. I have too much experience with trolls and/or unkind people over the last 25 years of writing online. I’m just not opening my nervous system up to that again, nor am I providing one more spot for YOUR nervous system to be knocked off kilter. That’s hallow ground as far as I’m concerned. If you want to comment and engage, I ask for you to pay the piper (Again, if you use this link, it’s about twenty bucks a year, one of the cheapest Substacks I know of.).

Some shifts you might have seen/felt over the past year

Faith/theology: I haven’t been writing about it as much. Maybe you haven’t noticed a shift, but I know I’ve written less about it (except my sexuality series—which I’m still getting messages from some of you about. Thank you!). Some of that is intentional. My head is thick in the novel which is not a theological story (except, of course, in the ways everything is theological). I’m not reading theology or really a lot of books on faith right now, therefore it’s not showing up in my output.

I’ve also made it no secret that I’m in a season of doubt/grief, and after enough years of writing online, I know now that what I need for a season like this is not to externalize that process for the public, but to externalize it for only a few. I’m not lying to you about the work that’s being done behind the scenes though. It’s work, it’s hard, and it’s happening with my partner, my closest friends, my therapist, and my local community.

Politics/culture: I’m thinking about this stuff a lot and often. And if I’m honest, politics especially has taken up an outsized space in my head over the past several years. The reasons why for that might surprise you. It’s not because I’m raging about whatever thing this administration is doing (although I probably am). It’s more because most of my family is pro-this-administration and the amount of work I have to do in my internal body to speak up about the injustice I see, knowing it is costing me relationship with them every time I do, it’s a lot.

It’s likely you haven’t heard me even say that out loud before. But one of my goals for myself is to acknowledge the tension I feel (which is true), bless the ways it’s showing up in me, and then say what I believe to be true anyway, regardless of the cost. The cost of doing this has been insurmountable for me since 2020—most of you don’t know this is the reason we eventually had to leave our little home on the river, but it was and I’m not going to say more about it here now.

Writing/reading: I’m a writer who reads. Or rather, I’m a reader who writes. Either way, this isn’t changing here on Sayable. I’m going to keep writing about writing and reading and continue doing both on my own time as well.

Personal/memoir: This is the sort of writing that most of you seem to really love here on Sayable. It may be because it’s a particular strength in my writing, but also it seems to touch a nerve with many of you.

It has been like pulling blood from a stone over the past five years, though, because of the very direct cost some of that writing has had on my life. Again, I’m not going to say much about this here now, but it is not an exaggeration to say that what I have written here in the past five years has resulted in the loss of almost every significant relationship I formed in my early twenties. The ones who remain are the most important people in my world and our relationships have only grown deeper and better, but the hundred “deaths without a funeral”³ I have had to navigate over the past five years feels at times insurmountable. I have not been able to resolve the tension here in a way that feels maintainable. I would like to do more of this here on Sayable, but I am committed to only writing within my window of tolerance so that I can heal.

Alrighty, have you made it this far?

Having read all of that, I would love if you would take this reader survey. It’s for free, paid, founding, or comped readers. If you’re reading Sayable, however regularly or sporadicly, I’d love for you to fill out the survey. It shouldn’t take you long. The last time we did one of these—in 2023—it became an immeasurably helpful resource to me over the ensuing years. I hope you believe me when I say that:

Finally, I just want to say thank you to each of you.

I have been writing some iteration of Sayable since 2001. Some of you have been here since then. Some of you over the last fifteen or ten years. Some of you in more recent years. I do not take any of that lightly. Every single time I open a card⁴ or read an email or comment or meet one of you in face to face, I want you to know I carry the weight of what that means for each of us. It is vulnerable for you to show up to me and share that I have been meaningful to you. And it is vulnerable for me to face you, in human flesh, without the ability to edit myself. And when two vulnerable peoples connect, beautiful things happen.

I am thankful for every single one of you and so, so, so many of you by name. You have shown up in the acknowledgement section of my books, you have been my beta readers for books, you have given me feedback I’ve asked for and sometimes haven’t 😂. You have prayed for me, encouraged me, actually loved me. You have stuck with me when you’ve disagreed with me, disagreed with me without attacking me, and sometimes decided you needed to leave Sayable, and thus me, for a time and then come back.

I want you to know that as much as it’s within my power to see you, I see you. I value you. Your presence matters to me. Your faces and names are coming to my mind right now, Leah, Amber, Lauren, Joy, Jennifer, Steven, Amy, Brent, April, Anna, Chris, Rebecca, Billy, Carolyn, Maci, Kaylin, Mel, John, Emily, Sara, Sally, Stephanie, Hillary, Phil, Seth. Okay I need to stop, but SO many of you.

Thank you for that. Really. Thank you. Sayable is about making things sayable, but things said without people to hear them make little difference in the grand scheme of things. You have been here to hear them, and to then say what you need to say in your world too. That is no small thing. This is how we all heal and become a little more whole a little at a time.

I love you.

PS I am keeping comments open on this one because of the nature of the post, but God help me, if the trolls be trolling, I will be blocking =)

1. This is also helpful for me when the platforms I use change up the ways they do things. We’re allowed to change. They’re allowed to change. And we get to decide if we want to keep using them or if we feel they’re using us. We’re not victims.

2. I used to do a Beauty I Saved every weekend on Instagram and fell off sharing that over the past year. I still saved it all, but didn’t share it. A few weeks ago, I did, and the response was overwhelmingly high from a lot of my followers there, which makes me think that maybe this stuff does still matter to many of you, but I don’t know that unless I hear it, hence this post and survey =)

3. Jason Gray’s line in a song about divorce, which is the best description of any kind of friendship/marriage/relationship break-up I’ve ever heard.

4. I no longer have my address publicized…for reasons…but if you’d like to send me something, just contact me on the link at the top of the page and ask, and I’ll reply with my address. Thanks for understanding =)