How do you Build a Sustainable Creative Practice on Substack?
Wisdom from Matt Evans of the Fog Chaser newsletter
Is it possible to build a sustainable creative practice on Substack?
This is the question I’ve been asking all year.
Maybe it’s something you’re wondering about too.
Today’s post is a multi-course meal:
The main course: this lovely video interview I got to do with Matt Evans of
(my favourite newsletter on Substack dedicated to sharing origional music).For an appetizer, you get the story of how I met Matt.
For desert, a classic how-to listicle that I hope encourages you to find new ways to share your own art.
This year, I’ve been trying to see what it feels like to share music more slowly, sending out one song a time to deliberately smaller group of interested listeners. In the process, I’ve met a kindred spirit: Matt Evans.
I’m so pleased today to share this conversation I had with Matt about his experience publishing music in non-traditional, more intentional ways.
If you’ve been around the music side of Substack for any amount of time, you probably know Fog Chaser. When I started my newsletter, Fog Chaser was my model. I’m so encouraged by Matt’s project. It’s grown steadily over the past four year without gimicks or tricks. Matt just keeps sending out songs, and folks keep coming back to listen.
This is how I met Fog Chaser Matt…
About a year ago, I decided to try releasing a 12 song album one song at a time over the course of a single calendar year. I was looking for a way forward with music that would feel meaningful and sustainable.
More and more these days artists don’t release albums at all. Streaming platforms, it turns out, not only change how we listen to music, but also how it gets made.
This song-a-month format seemed like a cheeky way to take the “singles only” approach to its extreme until one day I had a full 12 song album. The amazing thing is, we’re only 2 songs away from that being a reality!
When this idea occurred to me last fall, the first thing I did was give it a Google. Surely, I thought, someone has done this already. And I was right. That was the day I discovered the Fog Chaser newsletter.
What I found on Matt’s Substack was something like a digital garden—a small world of music, photography, and poetry that had been lovingly tended and cultivated for over three years. The music (these earthy and inviting instrumental pieces) totally captivated me. The songs communicate in sound what life feels like in the North West. And the presentation was so intuitive! Each month, Matt sent out a song accompanied by an original photograph, a short reflection, and a poem.
So, I decided to copy him.
Fast forward a few months later and it’s Spring 2025. I’ve just published a third song in my own fledgling song-a-month series, and now I’m taking a deep breath as I send Matt an email: “I’ve been feeling really inspired by your song-a-month project on Substack, and now I’ve started my own. What do you think about doing an interview sometime to talk about this format?”
And here we are.
How to share music on Substack: an interview with Matt Evans of Fog Chaser
In this interview, Matt and I compare notes, reflecting on our experiences sharing music on Substack so far.
The best part comes about half way through when Matt offers some guidance for those who are interested in sharing their own music (or any creative project!) on substack.
In the world of music on Substack, Matt is a veteran. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge on Substack since 2021 when Matt launched Fog Chaser. This site sees a lot of turnover, and there are very few people that have been sharing original music here for as long and as consistently as he has.
So if this song-a-month/newsletter format has caught your eye, then this is for you.
What started as an interview quickly turned into a conversation. It turns out we had a lot to talk about, from our experiences as new dads, to our mutual love of poetry and time spent living in the Pacific North West.
Use these time stamps to find your way around.
0:00 - Fatherhood and songwriting
11:04 - The origins of the Fog Chaser newsletter
19:35 - Searching for sustainable ways to share art online
25:28 - The origins of the Matthew Joel newsletter
29:15 - How to share music on Substack
35:33 - Remembering what matters most (making art)
How to sustainably share creative work on Substack.
One of the really rewarding things about sharing music publicly this year has been the messages I receive from friends and family who tell me how much they are feeling inspired to launch their own structured creative projects.
Well, if that’s you, here are a eight principles to live by which I’ve drawn from my conversation with Matt and from my experience over the past year.
1. Start right away
Just go for it. That’s the first piece of advice. You can course correct as you go. It doesn’t need to be perfect. In the creative process nothing is perfect. It’s just about opening a window into your work as an artist, writer, musician (read: human being). It might be intimidating to see all those shiny and put-together newsletters out there. I guarantee that is not how they looked at launch. You can iron out the details later—the name, the colour scheme, the packaging. If you feel really stuck, follow some of
’s guides. And when in doubt, remember that you have Fog Chaser Matt’s blessing: “I would say to anyone who wants to share their music on Substack, just do it.”2. Find a format that feels right no matter who is reading
I mean the packaging for your newsletter. In Matt’s words, its “format, cadence, tone, vibe.” This is where discovering the Fog Chaser Substack was a huge encouragement for me. As Matt put it in our conversation, “Build the thing you could imagine doing no matter if you had 2 subscribers or 2 million subscribers.”
The moment everything clicked for me was when I realized I wanted to record all of this year’s songs on my 4-track tape machine. It was the perfect creative limitation to focus the project—just the thing to get me out of my perfectionism and into the messiness of the work. I had already been making paper collages. These along with some rambley prose seemed like the perfect accompaniment.
In your early experiments, design a format through trial and error. When you find the thing that feels right, then just enjoy the process of putting it together every time you send out your work. Or, as Matt says, “Build it for yourself first, and trust that.”
If you’re looking for inspiration, check out my dear friend,
’s newsletter. I love his simple and elegant way of presenting his music.3. It has to be fun
“Build something you can be consistent with, and that means something you enjoy.”
I think Matt is onto something important here. Whatever format you decide to share your work in, check in as you go to make sure it is actually serving your life as an artist. This is also a question of format and packaging. As Matt shared about the early days of his newsletter, “I wanted to start something that would be sustainable for me, and part of that sustainability was creating the package it could live in forever. If I did this forever, what could I sustain?”
The goal is to nourish and find a way forward in a lifetime of making art. I don’t want to share art at all if it means I become disconnected from the practice of making it. That means I might not be able to participate on platforms like Substack in the same hyper-focused way newsletter entrepreneurs do. But that’s fine. I’m not racing a clock. I’m willing to just keep going and hang around and see what happens.
3. Play the long game
“It’s easy to be impatient wanting to grow.”
A friend of mine recently called my newsletter the “slow cooker approach.” I love that. Every month, throw a few more veggies in the pot. There is always pressure on platforms like this to grow, and grow quickly. There are always grifters trying to sell you the latest strategies for growth. My plan is that in twenty years, I will still be practicing my craft, while those charlatans will have moved on long ago to whatever is shiny and new.
Modern social platforms train us to think of online media as something that belongs exclusively to the moment—you drop something in the river, it makes a splash, and then its gone. As Matt reminds us: “Don’t get hung up on the metrics!”
Thankfully, there’s another side to the web 2.0 sub-structure of blog/newsletter publishing. At its best, it feels like tending a garden or building a world. The work accumulates, and as it does, it accumulates value. Inviting people to join you newsletter is an invitation to inhabit the world of your art, and if you stick around and keep going, you can trust that this world will emerge over time.
4. Work with the garage door open
Since you’ll be learning as you go, why not make the learning process part of the experiment? One thing I love about Matt’s Fog Chaser project is that he launched the newsletter at the same time he started studying composition at Berkley college of music. I think I can hear this in the music. As the newsletter progresses, I hear Matt trying bolder experiments in his craft. He’s learning as he goes, and we are invited along for the process.
My favourite example of this approach to sharing music on Substack is
. So far, Riri has one origional song (not the last!), but thanks to her willingness to share with opennes and honesty about her journey with music, her newsletter is almost irresistable.This is such a human way to make and share art. In my experience, this kind of humility begets more art. There’s this notion that people don’t want to know how the sausage gets made. That’s crap. I want to know. Please tell me about it!
5. Keep some of the work a secret
This is the Matthew Joel special: Don’t share everything. Keep some secrets. This has been so important for me. The creative practice is central. It’s central to who I am. And for some reason, keeping large parts of the work a secret feels really important. Write 50 poems and share 5. Keeping creative secrets like this cultivates a place of safety and sacredness around the work. It also cultivates this delicious sense of abundance. When I do this, I’m not afraid to experiment and have fun. There is so much I could share, but don’t. It means that when I do share something, it’s because it’s the right place and the right time.
6. Your heroes are your peers
said this to me recently. It’s become a mantra. The thing that makes an artist is practice their craft. That’s it. There’s no genius required. And it means that as soon as you start practicing your craft, you are doing the same thing as all of your heroes.For me, some really delightful evidence of this principle at work is this very interview. When I started on Substack, Fog Chaser Matt felt like he belonged to a different galaxy. And then I reached out and realized we’re the same. He’s just been around these parts a little longer than I have. We’re both traveling the same road, and there are many other wonderful folks here too.
So be bold. Be true to your practice. Listen to
and stop trusting the algorithm to make meaninful connections when all it takes is a daring email and a zoom call. Collaborate. Believe that the work will show you where it needs to go and who you need to talk to.7. Take breaks
If the only goal is to see a number or a metric go up, you should never take a break. You should keep going, keep posting, and remain perpetually online. Obviously, this is not the goal.
There are people out there, maybe even people working at Substack, who want you to believe this is the goal. But it isn’t. The goal is to make and share art in a way that is meaningful and sustainable.
This means you should probably take a break every now and then.
Practice taking periodic steps back from whatever platform you are participating on. The medium does not exaust the message. Chances are the strategies, metrics, and vibe of your platform are getting under your skin. Reconnect with who you are and what you hope for. Reevaluate what you have been working on. Disappear into the workshop and see what wants to get made.
8. Keep going
The only way to fail with art is to give up. I tried this for a while, but thankfully gave up on that too.
As Matt so poignantly put it at the end of our conversation, “When you finish a song, it makes room for the next song.” That, I think, is the most pressing reason to share the work. Art demands an audience, and in the moment when it is communicated, it’s like the loop closes and you can begin stepping forward into what needs to come next.
Whenever I send out a new song on this newsletter, it feels like I’ve planted a sign post along a path. This has been possible for me because Matt marked out his own journey and did it in a way that I could see, enjoy, and learn from.
What about you?
I hope this conversation emboldens you on your own journeys!
I’d love to hear about how you have been sharing your own creative work this year.
Do you have any hopes for 2026? Is there any creative work you’ve been dreaming of sharing?—let us know in the comments below!
 | A guest post by
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Loved getting the chance to talk with you, Matthew! Thank you!
Beautiful! It’s nice to read about you following in the footsteps of someone else (maybe the wrong phrasing but hopefully you understand me). I’ve been wondering about that recently, and who to look to to help with my structure. I’m quite used to being highly independent and creative in that aspect.
Also a fan of Social Media Escape Club and The Ririverse! 🙂