Hello everyone,

As always, now and forever, I hope you are all well.

In the last letter, I explained that I was about to engage in an online course; Linking Your Thinking in order to learn more about how to organise all of my thoughts.

It was essentially a highly advanced note-taking course.

Today, I want to share with you the fruits of this course with two special announcements.

  1. I am launching a paid subscription service to gain access to my collection of notes - I am calling this service the Sashin Exists Vault
  2. I will be taking the Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) challenge this November. Only, instead of writing a novel, I will aim to write fifty thousand words worth of notes by month’s end.

A Digital Treasure Trove

It was about three years ago when I quit my ordinary and uneventful job at a marketing agency to pursue writing. I feel like I have accomplished a lot since then; I now have a body of work that includes over fifty published pieces on topics spanning philosophy, politics, science, meditation and more.

One thing I have yet to succeed in is this: actually making a living off my work.

I have been facing a dilemma.

I write so that I can be read. I want my words to be as beneficial as possible to as many people as possible. I want to be able to impact the culture-at-large in a meaningful way.

As such, I would want to make sure that my articles and letters are as widely accessible as possible.

And yet, I have long since needed a way to monetise my work.

My current ways haven’t been very successful:

What I have been looking for is a way to have the entire main body of my work freely available and still be able to offer a service of real value.

With the Vault, I am hoping to do just that.

  • All my essays, letters and articles will be free for anyone.
  • My organised notes, however, will be accessible as a paid subscription service.

The Vault is:

  • A collection of mini-pieces, each on a concept I consider interesting or otherwise valuable
  • A non-fiction resource, a text that will grow in value over time (while you pay a fixed price)
  • A sneak peek into what will one day become my future letters and articles
  • Insight into how I work, what projects I am working on and how I am tackling them
  • My attempt to Modernise the Art of Writing and organise ideas in a way that they remain helpful many years after having been written

My writing and thinking are intertwined, and my notes are my second brain. As the years go by, I will continue to write more, and the Vault will grow in size. Imagine buying a book that evolved over time as you owned it, that you could find fresh pages of content whenever you went without looking at it for a few days.

As the Vault appreciates in value over time, so too will the price increase. However, when a person subscribes, they are locked into their original price: the value of the service will increase while the amount they pay remains the same.

And it won’t just be the content that will increase over time. As I learn more about better ways to store, organise and display information, I will improve the Vault creating a more streamlined experience.

I won’t write much more about it here, but rather insist that you have a look for yourselves.

Click here for the full details on what the Vault is, why you should care and how you can gain access by becoming a paid subscriber.

Fifty thousand words

NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, is an annual challenge that takes place every November. There are people all over the world taking part, so I am not sure why it is “national”.

Well, if it’s possible to take out the “National” part, then I will take the liberty to take out the “Novel” part too.

The NaNoWriMo challenge involves writing fifty-thousand words of your novel within a single month. I will be using it to instead write up fifty thousand words worth of notes and essays - all of which will be published to the Vault.

Over the past few months, I have been fine-tuning the process of writing, from learning a new keyboard layout to designing a keyboard-heavy workflow to getting ever more acquainted with Obsidian.

Now it will be time to put a brake on the never-ending pursuit of optimisation and put it all to use. To only have one main pursuit in life that I will be free to focus on to my heart’s content - to sit down and write.

I hope you all gain value from what I will have to say.

To summarise:

  1. I am now offering access to my treasure trove of notes as a subscription service. I am calling it Vault (click here to read more and to purchase a subscription).
  2. I will be taking part in the NaNoWriMo challenge and be aiming to write fifty thousand words worth of notes and essays by the end of November.
  3. Normal weekly letters will be back from now on; they will be free, now and forever

This piece has been the first one in a long time; I hope you have enjoyed it. To those of you interested in supporting my work by subscribing to the Vault, I am deeply grateful.

But to everyone else, I appreciate that you took the time to read through this letter and sincerely hope you continue to enjoy my writing for a long time to come.

And now back to our regular programming!

Take care everyone,

Sashin

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