110 / New Shoots

On the 1st of June 2017, I clicked publish on a project I had spent nearly a year making. It was the best and most ambitious thing I had made.

Three months later I — to all intents and purposes — “resigned” from the internet. I stopped making my own videos and posting about them; I closed up my Patreon campaign and switched my website to a single page of plain text. There was almost no way to contact me.

As much as I tried to dress it up to other people, my creative-self felt mortally wounded by the response the project had received, quite clearly measurable in the numbers of cancelled subscriptions.

The prevailing wisdom for dealing with a setback like this is to allow yourself one day to wallow in the sadness - and then get back to work.

I needed more than a day.

A long winter

I lost all confidence in my creative taste and instincts. I wanted to disappear, to be invisible. As I look back on it, the overwhelming emotion I felt was shame - even though I had nothing to be ashamed of.

The only public-facing thing I felt able to start was this little letter, which I have never promoted or shared (if you’re one of the few hundred people who’ve signed up, I don’t know how you got here!)

In ways I have only recently realised, I have spent much of the last five years in a kind of creative bereavement, nursing a wound without ever acknowledging my loss.

It has taken me a long while but once I was able to recognise this grief, I realised something else almost immediately: I want to be out of it.

Spring

All of that is to announce some important changes to The Third Something newsletter and my creative work in the months ahead.

First, a new website! 🖥️
I have spent the winter months¹ rebuilding my website from the ground up. Gone is the single page of plain text and in its place a colourful visual stage for the work I’m most proud of.

Is a website redesign a bit of frivolous procrastination? Probably². But it feels like an important step: a digital declaration of my intent to share my work more enthusiastically built on a growing faith that my art is worth sharing.

I hope you’ll take a look around!

Second, a Third Something archive! 💌
While rebuilding my website, I created a permanent archive for this newsletter, one that is much easier to explore than the Substack platform.

https://adamwestbrook.co.uk/newsletter

You can now find each letter simply by typing this address and then adding the three digit number of the letter. For example, this letter lives at:

https://adamwestbrook.co.uk/newsletter/110

Put in any number between 000 and 110 (or whatever the most recent newsletter is) and play potluck — fun!

Moreover, I have given each letter tags so you can explore the archive by topic, such as screenwriting, graphic novels, drawing — or, if you’re so inclined — relive the Covid pandemic through The Third Something!

Some of these 110 letters are good and helpful and inspiring and I’d like them to have a life beyond the Sunday they were fired into your inboxes.

Hosting my archive means I own both the content and the distribution. I believe owning my shit is a fundamental principle of how I want to go forward as an artist. As much as is realistic in this world, I will bias towards distribution I control.

I will still use Substack to deliver these letters for the time being, but from next Sunday the email from me will contain a link to the letter on my website.

Thirdly, a new project! ✈️
On Tuesday morning, I am boarding my first flight in more than two years. I am locking myself away in a hotel room for a week to write and draw some new stories, just for you.

I don’t want to say too much about this project yet — chiefly because I don’t know what it will insist on becoming — but I will share my process with you here, on Sundays.

“It is a joy to be hidden” writes D.W. Winnicott, “and a disaster not to be found.”

Five years is a really long time.

I want to be seen again.

Spring is here!

Until another Sunday soon,