The Lines I Didn't Publish (No.1)

Notes from behind the editors desk: What didn’t make the latest essay (and why)

Dearest Paid Subscriber,

First of all, thank you for your support, words of encouragement, and yes, financial contribution. I am genuinely chuffed to have you in my corner and have the privilege of knowing you. Alright, enough of that.

Part of being a paid subscriber to Substack is the promise of gated, exclusive content. This is a promise that I have never upheld… until now.

I would say the guilt has eaten me alive, but alas, I’m still here typing this while eating a date square (not my own arm).

Guilt or not, today that changes. I thought it could be interesting to offer a behind-the-scenes look at the road from final draft to published post. Amazingly, a lot happens between my “best and final” Google doc and copying it over to Substack to go live.

There’s something about the prospect of hitting publish—even if it’s just to a handful of people—that forces a different lens.

Suddenly, you picture a frenemy reading your post line by line to a room full of your detractors, and wonder: could this line get me cancelled? Is that even what that word means? And for the millionth time, how the hell do I use a semicolon?

In the same vein, over-editing can happen, and we must be careful not to smooth out all of the edges.

And so, without further ado, here’s what I changed between my last Google draft and the published version of Should I Have Kids?