Friendly Reminders

please be normal

Hello guys! I hope everyone is doing well!

Today, I’m going to get more serious than usual. March has been a slightly stressful month (I simply can’t catch a break), and I wanted to address something that happened recently to make sure that this can continue to be a safe and comfortable space for all of us.

I try to cultivate a friendly space, and I like to think that I’m very approachable. I love interacting with people here and reading everyone’s comments. It makes my day whenever someone leaves a nice and thoughtful comment on one of my essays, or someone says they are going to check out something I talked about. This is why my DMs are open to everyone, because I want to be able to talk directly with all of you, and I want to let people reach out to me if they feel like it. I would never put that behind a paywall because I don’t think of it as a privilege. I’m just some girl on the internet, not a celebrity!

However. It’s important for everyone to remember that just because you get to see part of my life through my posts, it doesn’t mean you know me personally, and that me replying to your comments and talking with you doesn’t mean we have a personal relationship. I love the little community that we have, and I deeply appreciate all my readers, especially the ones that pop up often on my notifications with their nice comments. That doesn’t mean we know each other. I'm a writer, and you guys are my readers, and there are boundaries that need to be respected.

A few weeks ago, someone started leaving lots of comments on my posts, even older ones from when I first started writing. While that was overwhelming, I’m not going to tell anyone to stop commenting. The issue here is that this person not only left comments, but they also sent me private messages that quickly got too personal. I tried to establish some boundaries, which they proceeded to skirt around, until I decided that it was time to put an end to that and blocked them. Unfortunately, they then proceeded to bother someone else about this. As far as I know they have only reached out to one person, but if anyone else has received weird or persistent messages because of this situation, I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.

Another reason I wanted to talk about this is that this person was also leaving comments on other people’s posts, but they would always reply to me directly and ignore the original poster, sometimes leaving comments that didn’t address the post at all. They would also reply to me very quickly whenever I commented on someone else’s post, even though they didn’t subscribe to any of the (wonderful) publications that I follow. I felt that this behavior was disrespectful to my fellow writers, and I’m deeply sorry to everyone who had to see that; it must have been very frustrating to be treated so rudely on your own newsletter.

This whole situation has been eating at me and made me anxious to open Substack, which is why I haven’t been as active. I have also been very busy, so I don’t have as much time to write. I could whip something out just to keep up with my weekly schedule, but as I’ve mentioned before, I prefer not to post than half-ass a post. That’s why this week’s ASOIAF post will be delayed, and I’ll probably reduce my output for a while until I start feeling comfortable writing again.

So, some rules moving forward:

• Please DO leave comments; I love reading your thoughts and discussing things together! Just make sure that your comments are relevant to the topic at hand.

• Anyone can reach out to me in my DMs, but do NOT bring personal matters into our conversations and do NOT try to get intimate with me. I’m not opposed to becoming friends with my readers and mutuals, but if you are pushy about it, I’ll block you.

• Be respectful of other writers, not just me!

• Remember that I’m a real person with a life outside Substack; don’t act like you know me based on the things I post about.

With all that said, I want to end this on a positive note. I’m working on something that I hope you guys will enjoy: Writer Interviews. I want to start a new series in here where I interview fellow Substack writers, and I have already reached out to a couple of them. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get this new series out, but look forward to that, and let me know if you would be interested in participating!

I’m going to take a short break from Substack, but I will be posting my March Wrap-Up next week as usual, and I’ll use this time to catch up on all the newsletters sitting in my inbox. Thank you to everyone for the support and understanding!

-Love, Maria.