The Lagoon Turns One! (Still a baby)

54 posts, plus Patti Smith's transformative haircut

Apr 27, 2023

Wow! This publication, Charlotte Dune’s Lagoon, has officially existed for a year! I sent my first email/episode/post on April 27th last year, entitled, Welcome to the Lagoon, and I basically just sent it to myself, because I had no subscribers yet. Very low pressure, but I did my best to spread the word, and I’m happy to report that the Lagoon has steadily grown to 600+ people. (Lol, I hope you’re all real people and not bots!)

In that first post, I shared a picture from my old LiveJournal blog from the 2000-2010s of the sky in Yaoundé, Cameroon, where I used to live, and a new picture of the current sky a year ago in my backyard in Florida. Here is another sky photo from today because it is a lovely day once again, and this time you can see a bit of the moon.

From the very beginning, I decided I would “refuse to niche.” I wanted to keep this lagoon free to flow with whatever I’m obsessed with and hope that readers find interest in it, too. I’ve maintained that openness, plus been able to feature guest writers and interviews with people who also refuse to niche.

The Lagoon was an experiment as well because I didn’t know if I’d really have enough time to write it every week, but I loved it and I made time. Life is like that—we do the things we make time for. We accomplish what we make time for.

Patti Smith’s Haircut

When I first checked out Substack last year, I poked around on other authors’ publications and I remember watching this video, titled, Slowly Stopping By, on Patti Smith’s Substack. Her casual energy inspired me to finally click publish on the Lagoon and it reminded me of a story from her beautiful memoir, Just Kids.

Picture of *Just Kids*, by Patti Smith. Just read it; it’s so good.

In the book, she describes being mistaken for a folk singer, and though she liked Joan Baez, the mistake bothered her. She didn’t want to be a folk singer; she wanted to be a poet who rocked. So, she lay out pictures of Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger —poets who rocked. She also studied pictures of Keith Richards, then she got out a pair of scissors and cut her hair like theirs. After that, everything changed for her. She wrote:

“I began to cut my hair with reckless abandon. Every snip was a liberation. Every chop was like a prayer chanted in the name of some fervent new devotion. I cut my hair to align myself with something I was feeling, even though I couldn't yet define it…
Though I was still the same person, my social status suddenly elevated…Opportunities suddenly arose.”
— Patti Smith, Just Kids

Patti Smith had to look like a rock star poet before people would take her seriously as a rock star poet and I feel like writing a Substack is kind of like that for authors. I’m a novelist and a writer and I want people to take me seriously in that capacity because I am very serious about it, and where are the other serious writers? Many are right here on Substack because that’s where the serious readers (like you) are too.

So, I studied author Substacks, just like Patti and her magazine pictures, and I got to work and I’m so happy I did.

Feel free to peruse my archives from the past year. I shared 54 pieces of writing or audio episodes, about one per week, and I plan to continue this pace. Or, ICYMI, read my most popular piece of the past year, The First Rules of Fat Club, inspired by another famous author and Substacker, Chuck Palahniuk.

Future Springs

Before I end this post, let’s spring backward and forward for a moment.

Last April:

This Substack was a newborn baby
Twitter was a public company
Ai art was JUST beginning
People had a lot more hope for Meta, Bitcoin, and NFTs
ChatGPT-3 didn’t exist yet
The Queen of England was still alive
We knew way less about Johnny Depp’s poopy pillow.
Kanye wasn’t a known Nazi
The Ukraine-Russia War had already begun

Future April

I’m sad to say that the Russian-Ukraine war still continues. I hope next year I’ll be able to report that the war has ended.

Changes happen so fast these days, especially with technology, and I’ve found myself writing more about technology topics than I originally suspected I would. This will likely continue because nothing is slowing down; everything is speeding up and I think it’s beneficial to collectively share and process these changes together.

And speaking of technology and changes, I’ve recently added a paid subscription feature to this Substack for folks who want to read more personal essays, as well as to read certain excerpts and short stories published in books or planned for inclusion in future published books. This is partly to avoid violating Amazon’s terms as well, because they will remove books from their store if more than a small amount of that book’s text appears online for free.

Posts will all be initially free, but then some will go behind this paywall for future readers. This may evolve over time, but as of now, that’s the plan.

The cost of this subscription is $6.90 a month, less than a fancy martini in a bar, and definitely healthier for your brain! It’s also a great way to show your support for my writing if you have disposable income to share.

In the future, I hope to have enough paid subscribers to justify hiring an employee to help me with tasks related to cultivating this space, and until further notice, 100% of the contributions will go towards improving and expanding the Lagoon.

Whether you’ve been here from day two, or are a new arrival, I thank you from the depths of my swamp for your time and attention spent here. I hope you gain value from my writing.

Now You

Is there a haircut you need to make? Is your heart longing to do something you haven’t yet done? Well, this post is your sign to do it with, in the words of Patti Smith, “fervent new devotion” and I’d love to hear about your plans!

Charlotte Dune's Lagoon

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