A Critical Decision

I love technical writing. But I can't do it full time for everyone.

Something unexpected happened at work today, in my day job as a technical writer. The upshot is that I have until this Monday to make a critical decision — one that affects you as readers, too.

Some background

My day job involves all types of explanatory writing. You might describe it as translating technical concepts into jargon-free and easy-to-understand content that non-experts can easily follow. (The perfect training for this Substack, you might say.)

I produce various types of written content as part of my day job, ranging from papers to Excel-based tools. It also includes ghostwriting books.

A few weeks back, I handed in my ninth manuscript. Today, I heard back from both the credited author and the publisher — and the feedback completely stunned me. You may as well read the first part of it for yourself, in the (redacted) screenshot below:

The dilemma

I’d love to accept the offer of receiving public credit for a potentially award-winning book. But doing so carries with it certain responsibilities and requirements — and meeting them leaves me less time to write on this Substack (though not no time — whatever happens, I’ll continue to publish new, free articles).

As such, my options are as follows:

1. Accept the offer, and publish less frequently on Substack.

Concretely, this means I wouldn’t be writing up publishable Qullamaggie stream notes for every individual stream anymore, but instead focus on less frequent posts that still offer value to my readers and contribute to my own studies.

Here are some ideas I had (some overlap a bit):

• Notes on selected Qullamaggie streams only.

• Notes on other top-quality but less frequent resources.

• The top lessons from multiple Qullamaggie streams — a more in-depth version of this, for example.

• Doing occasional deep dives on Qullamaggie-inspired topics — something like this, but probably more in-depth.

• A close look at specific quantitative analysis techniques (for Excel-based trading journals) that are easy to learn and help build conviction — also see this tweet.

Incidentally, a few of these ideas would resolve the issue of having a lot of overlapping content (poor Kristjan constantly has to repeat himself). If you’ve read several of my posts, you’ll no doubt have already noticed that I usually link to past notes (where they’re relevant) rather than duplicate long explanations, unless I feel that the repetition adds value.

However, over time, this may become chaotic. It certainly doesn’t make for an ideal reading experience, nor make for particularly efficient study materials. So the approach as outlined in some of the above bullets may actually resolve that issue.

Anyway, my family wants me to take this approach, rather than option 2 below.

2. Decline the offer and the associated career move, and continue this Substack the way I have been.

Whether this is an option my family could be happy with depends on you.

To date, I’ve never asked for payments, yet some of you have already voluntarily pledged (though I haven’t accepted any payments so far). I’m deeply grateful to you — I couldn’t have asked for a clearer statement of how much you value my work on this Substack. Thank you!

But with the opportunity offered by the publisher, I now have to ask the question: how many of you are prepared to voluntarily pledge to support me continuing this Substack as I have been?

I’ve been inundated with messages expressing their thanks for my work, and that it’s a valuable resource to them. But is it valuable enough to you to — voluntarily — financially support its production?

This option is obviously a risk for me, particularly as such an opportunity with the publisher may never come up again, not to mention that my Substack is still so new. (Who knew that life would get so exciting these past few weeks! New Substack, new career opportunity, up for an award, and my first holiday since December. Oh, and plenty of market opportunity.)

Anyway, back to business. It is a risk, but one I’m prepared to take, if my readers make clear that my writing is valuable enough to them. I will not enable payments in the near future if I don’t receive enough pledges to take this risk and, for now, just continue this Substack in line with option 1.

What about paywalls?

I’m a woman of my word. I’ve already promised to never paywall the stream notes because I don’t believe in paywalling direct notes on free content. In fact, my belief in that principle is so strong that I’d rather stop making my notes public than violate that principle.

As for other content types — the posts that are more my own — I had considered paywalling those. And while that would remain an option, it isn’t my preferred route. I’d really like this Substack to be something I can treat as a full-time job, with almost daily posts, using a Wikipedia-style model.

Failing that, this Substack will probably become something I do on the side only. So you’ll still get quality posts from me, just not about every individual Qullamaggie stream, and not on an almost daily basis.

Conclusion

I want a career as a technical writer. It’s something I’m good at, can help others with and genuinely enjoy. I am also a trader, but not a full-time one, and am also not really aspiring towards becoming a full-time trader. Besides, the strategies I’ve been using and adopting to suit my personality and lifestyle don’t require me to trade full time.

But a technical writer on what? That’s the question I have to answer for myself this weekend. The publisher is expecting my answer by Monday.

If you want me to dedicate myself to this Substack as I have been, please do pledge. Again, I will only activate payments in the near future if enough of you pledge for me to turn down the publisher’s offer.

Or if you’re happy to see me post less frequently as per option 1, just wish me (and my latest book) good luck with the award!