Lena Dunham gave me some advice

'You don't have to be everything to everyone.'

As surreal-but-nice coincidences go, this one was up there: last Friday, I happened to interview Lena Dunham, the fairy godmother of newsletters, with days to go before my own newsletter launch.

For context: Lena is, among her multi-hyphenated accolades, the former co-founder of the wonderful Lenny Letter (RIP), which was an online publication centred around feminist topics which ran from 2015 to 2018. If you’d like a recap (or missed Lenny the first time around), you can read the archives here.

The pretext for our interview was not, sadly, because Lenny Letter – later shortened to Lenny – is making a comeback, although a girl can dream. I was actually interviewing Lena about her new Amazon Prime movie, Catherine Called Birdy, a medieval coming-of-age comedy (a combination that sounds as unlikely as strawberries sliced over avocado toast, but I can assure you that both work very nicely).

Conversation turned to the value of owning your own creative space – something Lena has done in many guises over the years, e.g. directing, producing and writing – and she couldn’t have been more encouraging when I told her I was launching my own corner of the internet. Side note: I’ve noticed, throughout my career, that the most well-known celebrities I’ve interviewed also tend to be the nicest ones – with few exceptions – and it’s encouraging to think about that meritocracy in Famous Person Land. 

Anyway, here’s the advice Lena Dunham gave me: 

I think my biggest piece of advice is really knowing what your audience is and what your story is and, and taking chances of course. Sometimes these newsletters feel like they have to be everything to everyone. And the wonderful thing about a newsletter is that you don't have to do what a magazine would do and upload a story about every single news event. You can really focus on what you care about and what you can really focus on your space. So I would encourage you to know that you don't have to be everything to everyone. You can own your own space and then you can take chances and surprise your audience within that space. I think people talk a lot about scaling and growth, but like to take it slow and to take your time and to, and to take your time finding your voice and I'm so excited to read it.

I wanted to share this advice for a couple of reasons (aside from, obviously, it’s Lena Dunham). Firstly, because I think it’s apt for anyone in this community looking to create your own creative space, whether that’s on Substack; or through making a podcast; or through physical, in-person gatherings; or launching a social media account (I’ve personally struggled with the latter as a primary creative space – but there are many great examples).

I particularly like the reminder that you can’t be everything to everyone. It’s a useful antidote to that urgent, pressured feeling that you should be on TikTok or should create a certain type of content or should respond to a particular newsworthy event – because it’s in that sense of shouldness that you lose sight of the reason you started out in the first place.

But also, I guess I wanted to declare it as a sort of manifesto for what I’m doing here – because Lena’s advice about ‘taking it slow’ resonated. Don’t let the shiny new logo fool you; I’m not pretending to have this all figured out, and I think we’re going to work better that way. I want to show my workings with The Shoulds, in a way I haven’t been able to before, because I think this new-ish media platform (by which I mean, Substack) really allows for that experimentation. This is a two-way conversation: I’m looking forward to hear what works (and doesn’t) for you.

I’ll be introducing some of my regular content features, including community threads & expert interviews, from next week. But in the meantime, happy Friday and thank you for supporting the launch of The Shoulds this week. I love writing these newsletters – and I’m excited to get to know you all through the process.