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After Six Months Free, Paid or Gift Subscriptions Are Your Option

Six months ago, I started the Substack Critical Conditions by Wayne Robins. It was free to all to subscribe, to read, to forward, and to be shared. Because there is no advertising, Substack has appeal to both writers and readers. Subscriptions have grown steadily, and the pass-along readership is steadily reaching beyond 1,000 per column. Now I am offering a paid option, but no reader will be left behind. It will remain free to those who cannot or prefer not to pay for as long as it is feasible for me.

But writing is hard work, and writing well really hard. The columns I publish at least weekly (more often during long holiday and summer breaks from teaching, during which I get no income) take a few minutes to read but many hours to write. Days of preparation, note-talking, trying to decipher my increasingly unreadable handwriting. Then, there are many hours of editing, deleting excess, debating with myself what constitutes excess, or irrelevance, or not quite the "right fit." (I often …