Hi!
Another day another platform
Well hello friends
I’m Amy. I write. Mostly about nature and our place in it, about time and about being alive for so little of it. I’m proably best known for my 2022 book The Flow, which won the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing in 2023, and has led to my speaking for rivers ever since. I’m also a campaigner with the access organisiation Right to Roam, working to build a new culture of nature connection and care in which people and wildlife can all thrive within reslient, diverse and abundant ecosystems. My most recent book A River Running Though You is for children—those wise, kind, instuitive, inscrutable, creative and endlessly surprising beings we all carry inside us as we grow and should listen to more.
I write other things too: columns for the Guadian Country Diary and British Wildlife, and essays, musings, the odd rant. This might be be a home for some of all of that.
There’s a subscribe button at the bottom you can click for updates when I post. I have no idea how often I’ll do so, but let’s see, shall we? If you’re out there, you are the incentive I need: if it’s too much or not enough, you do you and just call in when you like. No pressure either way, OK?
On the face of it, a paid subscription model should be a good fit for me, but… I just can’t. Call me old fashioned (I am); call it imposter symdrome, call it insecurity, call it total lack of entrepreneurial drive or business sense (yes all those), but I’m deeply aware times are tough for so many people, who might just come here for a bit of relief from it all. You are very very welcome.
I have to admit though, I am pretty averse to writing for nothing. It is, and has been for 25 years my job, that thing we we do in order to pay the bills. In those 25 years the amount freelance writers get paid per word has plateaued, meaning a horrible real terms drop in earnings, and the number of outlets willing to pay has crashed. Then AI started theiving our words. Fortunately no AI can spend the time I spend in nature, sense the things I sense, or filter them through 55 years of lived experience. So they will never give you what I can. And I in turn will not give you what they do. This is a slop-free zone.
So if at any point something you find here a human wish to support a fellow human to do more of the same, look for a tip jar button like the one just here and you can chip in as you feel via Ko-fi, which will undoubtedly make my day. Thank you!
Off we go… you coming or what?
It’s great to see you here and I’m very excited to read what you have to share.
I really appreciate what you say about sharing things for free, and about the tip jar—it’s the model I operate, too, although I also have paid subscriptions enabled for those who prefer that (with the knowledge I won’t be paywalling anything other than my fiction, once a story has been finished).
One advantage to this, that isn’t immediately obvious, is that then you can also arrive on the ‘rising’ lists curated in a mysterious fashion by some sort of Substack algorithmic small god and, every time I do, it brings in more free subscribers who discover my words this way. Money-wise, I find the tip jar considerably more productive, however, but some people just prefer to subscribe, and I’m very grateful for them.
Finally, Wayland’s Smithy! Been a while since I’ve visited, but I doubt it’s changed that much!
And thank you for The Flow and all the work you share.
Hello Amy-Jane, and welcome! There are a lot of nature lovers, readers and writers here (we keep asking for a Nature category on Substack). Looking forward to reading whatever you choose to share. Loved The Flow.