How do you write a newsletter when grief has wrapped its arms around you and your family and everyone that you love?
Let me tell you.
First, you pretend that it’s not happening. Business as usual. Stay the course.
Open a fresh Google Doc.
Pick a topic. Any topic. Just pick a topic.
How about… AI? There’s a lot to say about AI!
Subject line: How I use AI [insert robot emoji, insert sparkle emoji]
I admit for a long time AI was something that I didn’t want to think about.
No. Select all, delete.
Subject line: Confessions of an AI convert [insert robot emoji, insert sparkle emoji]
AI was something that I mostly ignored until I couldn’t any more. Yes, I admit that I was somewhat afraid of our robot overlords.
Ugh, no. The first subject line was better.
Subject line: How I use AI [insert robot emoji, insert sparkle emoji]
Artificial Intelligence was one of the top trends I chatted with Amelia about on our 2025 marketing trends episode of Off the Grid…
delete delete delete delete deleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeete
Why have I started this paragraph 17 times? Because I feel tired and sad and stuck…
At this point, give yourself permission to take a break.
Stand in front of the refrigerator with the doors open for approximately four minutes. Spoiler: you will find no answers in there but Jeff has made lemonade.
–
Get out of the house and go see a play. Preferably a musical that has won both a Tony and a Pulitzer.
Sit in the dark room and don’t you dare think about the newsletter.
Or the grief for that matter.
Let yourself be a whole human for those two hours. Contemplate that quote from Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven – "survival is insufficient."
If you can, stay for the talk back with the writer and creator.
What is the best piece of advice that you would share with someone who is just starting out?
“People ask me a lot about making it and how to be successful but almost never about the craft,” he says. “Focus on your craft, focus on your craft, focus on your craft.”
This will remind you of some of the first marketing talks you did for wellness entrepreneurs when you would tell them to forget about branding and just figure out how to be a really good nutritionist.
Decide to write about that for the newsletter.
Except now all that art and inspo has left you buzzing. You won't be able to decide if you should write the newsletter first or maybe a poem or paint something or make a collage.
Listen to an interview with the playwright on Fresh Air instead and fall asleep with your headphones in.
–
It’s Friday and now you’re fucked.
Give yourself permission to skip sending a newsletter this week. That's what you'd tell a client to do after all. Go slow, stay steady, etc. etc.
Make plans to meet a friend for coffee instead of staring at the blinking cursor for another four hours.
Immediately panic that if you don’t send a newsletter you will simply drift away into internet business obscurity never to be seen or heard from again.
Cancel your plans to meet a friend for coffee.
Open your laptop and find the Google Doc called May 2 – AI Newsletter. Move it to the trash.
Create a fresh Google Doc.
Take a deep breath and decide to just tell the truth.
Subject line: How to write a newsletter from the depths of despair.
Amanda Laird
Founder & Principal Strategist, Slow & Steady Studio
PS: Last week my family said good-bye to my mother-in-law just 56 days after she was diagnosed with cancer. We are in it. Regular Slow & Steady programming will return sometime in the next week or two.
Until then, check out the brand new one-line strategy framework and last month's Just Enough Session on demystifying strategy for inspo in the meantime.