Hello my loves!
This is for you, you wonderful folk who have placed your hard earned cash with me and my writing.
I am so deeply, deeply grateful, I wish I had the words to express what a tangible difference you have made to my confidence and determination to turn up and write.
You have also, importantly, helped me put food on the table and pay my bills.
But I have decided to remove the paywall so that there will no longer be a paid subscription option.
There are a few reasons.
I think we’re all a bit fed up of paid subscriptions. I know I am. And it just isn’t sitting comfortably with me, to be promoting something that I feel is a flawed system on this platform. Artists, creatives, writers need to be paid for their work. This is absolutely necessary. But the subscription model has become overwhelming, and I personally don’t believe in it anymore.
I have to make it very clear that is in no way AT ALL a judgment on anyone who does have paid subscriptions. It can work really well, I think in many ways it’s really beautiful that you decide to support one person on a monthly basis.
I’ve just got a bit of a bee in my bonnet about it now, for myself, and how I move forward, and I can’t shake it.
Whilst it has been fantastic for me to have a deadline (yes, it has been quite ‘flexible’ a lot of the time) each week, and my writing has definitely improved as a consequence, I would also like to have a bit of time to pause and regroup on what I’m writing about.
I will be stopping A Kitchen Notebook as a publication. I will continue to write about similar themes, but as my life has changed in the last couple of years, and my life is less centred around the kitchen table, I think it’s time for a new chapter.
It will all still remain there, and not much will change really, I still write about my life, creativity, home, identity and ritual. But there is a shift and I’m just figuring out what that is and what it looks like for my writing.
How will this work for you?
I will start the process of refunding you tomorrow, Friday, so it may take a little time, but you should receive the prorated refund via substack. Please let me know if you have any issues.
How can you support my work?
I am swallowing this cut in my income along with a big dose of faith that it will grow in other ways. It’s a financial risk, but ‘abundance’ is the word currently on loudspeaker in my mind.
I am continuing to create online workshops like Tell the Story of Your Home and in person workshops at my studio and beyond, like Kitchen Table Creativity
I sell my art work (currently UK only I’m afraid) and I will now include the link to Buy Me a Coffee on each post.
So!
There we have it. I shall start the process of refunding tomorrow.
And I’ll still be here, I’m going nowhere, I’m simply shifting the parameters a little.
Above all, THANK YOU for supporting me financially as well as all the other wonderful ways, I feel truly honoured. You have helped restore my faith in myself.
And I hope you will continue to be here.
Love,
Java x
I'd be interested in reading more of your thoughts on this. I don't like subscriptions either, primarily because the cost of subscribing to multiple individual substacks adds up very quickly and just isn't sustainable, but it also felt off for me to charge when I did, and I'm not entirely sure why!
You go girl!