100th Edition of Indie Notebook!
Hallå pals!
Jonas here with another issue of Indie Notebook to get some ideas out of my noggin, and to inspire you to do the same.
Today is a special issue of Indie Notebook, because it’s the one-hundredth time I send one of these out! I think this is the first time I do 100 of anything.
To prepare for this day I’ve been rereading everything I’ve written so far. I feel a mix of small embarrassment and big pride. Small embarrassment: because I put myself out there. Big pride: because I managed to keep this up for so long and to have found so much interesting stuff to talk about (if I may say so myself).
Rereading from the beginning I noticed a couple things,
My messy grammar
Sentences that don’t flow properly
How long it took for me to name the newsletter Indie Notebook
How long it took for me to find the format that I’ve been using for the newsletter for so long now.
But what surprised me the most was to see how long it took until I started to get response. For at least a year, I was just writing this with absolutely no response from anyone. Now I hear from you guys almost every week. I’ve almost started to take it a bit for granted, it feels a bit like it’s always been this way. I was surprised to see it’s only been this way for the last one and a half years.
It’s so comforting to hear from you guys every week, to know that you’re reading and care about what I have to say.
It was just eye opening for me to realize how long it took to get here. I’m so glad I didn’t give up, cause hearing from you guys is one of the highlights of my weeks.
What I’ve learnt by doing this is that making a newsletter is slow. It doesn’t have the quick dopamine kick of social media. It forces me to slow down. It feels more sincere and meaningful.
The Noteworthy from the first 100 issues
Picking a name for Indie Notebook - I sent the first issue of this newsletter back in October 2021. Back then I just called it “my newsletter” or “Indiana-Jonas’ Newsletter.” It wasn’t until a year later that I thought of this name for it. Picking that name made this newsletter seem a whole lot more serious and interesting.
And it wasn’t until July in 2023 when I realized what’s the purpose of this newsletter, and how to phrase it properly. It might change again, but 1 year later I still feel like it holds up.
Some of the issues I enjoy writing the most are the ones where I talk about something I’m currently working on and figuring out myself. Probably because I’m also learning from what I’m writing about. Some of the best examples of that are,
The best example of “working out a creative project in the newsletter,” is this series about how I made Plock. I was frustrated that I had not finished more projects and that I never managed to keep them small. So I made this small game to prove to myself that I could. And then I even made a vlog about it. This is something I would like to do much more of here. I started doing it again just last week when I talked about a Playdate game I’m working on.
When I don’t share stuff about my projects, I tend to share essays or thoughts about very specific stuff. The ones that hold up the best in my eyes are,
Another one of the formats I like in this newsletter is when I share glimpses into my sketchbooks. Such as when I filled a notepad with 80 tiny illustrations and made a PDF out of it, or The Banana Sketchbook Tour which was 7 years in the making.
It’s also fun to look back and see how I gradually started talking a little bit about Space Deer and then more and more until it came true. One of the earliest mentions was in this jab at explaining why I felt the need to change their character design. And then a bit later I shared a couple of rough pages from when I thought I would be making a graphic novel out of their story.
I love it when you guys reach out to me, I had a video chat with one reader and we talked about his projects, some of you comment every week, occasionally I get email responses with follow up questions or your own thoughts. It was so much fun to answer your questions last year about “how to think about audience” and “what is your why”, because I knew it was stuff you guys cared about.
I would love to do that again, cause I love to make other people feel seen and heard in this newsletter too. So far there are “only” 90 subscribers to this newsletter. I say “only” because of social media standards. But the quality of the interactions that come out of this are on a whole other level than social media tends to be. I like to think of this as a high quality connection, rather than a quick “hi.”
What will change?
I don’t want to change much about how this runs. I just want to do it better.
I would like to think of more fun ways to interact with you. Maybe start using the Substack chat?
And I want to write more about what I’m currently working on.
❓ Question time
There are two things I’m wondering about as I write this.
Do you have any memories related to Indie Notebook that you would like to share?
And what types of posts do you like to read the most?
Panel of the week
(from Space Deer)
Thank you for reading Indie Notebook! Let’s see if we make it to 200.
Take care and have a creative week.
Congrats! What a cool milestone :)
I just checked out some of your earlier entries and was surprised that I didn't comment on or like any posts for quite a while, in the beginning. Then I remembered that there at least was a period where I just used to read them as an email.
One that stood out to me was "The two invisible steps before you make something". It really resonated with me and involved what is probably my favorite topic: creative process.
https://indianajonas.substack.com/p/the-two-invisible-steps-before-you?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
The sketchbook was also such a cool bonus and I remember being surprised at the level of care you put into that collection.
It was also great for me when you dedicated a post to answering my question, “how to think about audience”. Some of the perspectives I got from reading and digesting that have stayed with me, and I think the overall format of reader questions here helped inspire me to land on the Substack project I now have in the works.
Finally, I have really enjoyed "the afterparty" down in the comment section -- even to the point of writing some rather enormous comments from time to time, lol.
In order to keep that from happening now, I just wanna say congrats and here's to 100 more!!
Edit: I may have been too late :)
I found "Nobody is looking for links to click" to really hold true. I always try to embed into the platform directly if possible. I never expect engagement out the blue because seemingly humans are habitual. Unfortunately it's not possible here to embed the video of my WIP cube violin: https://i.imgur.com/6o5iV5n.mp4 (and nobody is looking for headphones to put on is another thing I feel myself as a consumer; videos without sound requirement usually go down better)
I liked the creative journey posts and life story posts; I still remember the tennis racket with a face that resembles an unfortunate racial stereotype; it was a fun story.
Re-reading "what is your why?" is cool, I'm reminded of this now: https://soranews24.com/2019/07/10/hayao-miyazaki-talks-on-how-working-hard-isnt-something-to-be-proud-of-not-forgiving-yourself/
"Working hard is a matter of course; if you don't, nothing gets done."
:) Happy 100!