How Can I Write Like ME This Week (with you?)
Nobody can tell me how to do this right (damn it) and the week's write-alongs.
TL;DR: Week’s write-alongs at the end!
I’d been starting to feel something off when I got dressed every day. My clothes are great (I love clothes) and I have things I love, but somehow the result when I looked in the mirror was a little too quiet, a little too polished—not for anyone in general, but for me.
I am neither quiet nor polished, but what I am is influenceable. One of my most shameful moments was when a blunt classmate joked that I was dressing like my boyfriend and I wondered if maybe I was (it was the 90’s! EVERYONE was wearing flannel!!). I used to do that—buy things, get them home, then realize that basically I’d tried to buy someone else’s style and life (everyone in my family remembers the “Jess Dress”).
The me I was seeing in the mirror wasn’t anyone in particular this time. She was an amalgam of style Substacks and YouTubers, and she looked just fine, she was just lacking an element of “me”. And then I read this, on Beth Bentley’s Pattern Recognition:
Isn’t it odd that we’ve never had access to more people’s opinions, but somehow we’ve never been less confident in our own? That we seem so sure someone, somewhere knows better than we do?
That resonated with respect to my outfits, but the rest of the piece (which you should read) went even deeper, pointing to why we have this instinct , how it keeps us safe (or, as Jennie Nash would say, “playing small”). And then this:
Perhaps the question isn’t “whose recommendations should I trust on this?” but “why don’t I trust my own judgement on this?”
Ouch.
What should I write? How should I write it? What do people want to read? How can I do this the way that other writer did, to have that success?
Some of those are legit questions. But they can hold us back at the same time.
I think I’ve hit on the theme of the week, and maybe the rest of the month! So more is coming.
MEANWHILE let’s write together! The week’s write-alongs:
Monday 11/17/25 11:30-1 EST
Tuesday 11/18/25 11:30-1:30 EST
Wednesday 11/19/25 11-1
And let’s block out next week too:
Monday 11/24 11-1
Tuesday 11/25 11:30-1
Link to join is below the paywall. And of course that’s also how you get to submit a first page! And you’re gonna need it to do the Blueprint right in January… plans are in progress.