Tangential thoughts

Frustrated by heaps of fact-checking work, I lean wholeheartedly into writing for fun.

I got the idea to start a personal newsletter when Meta blocked Canadians from sharing news links on Facebook and Instagram.

Seemingly overnight, I wasn’t able to share stories I wrote (with my bare hands!)

I felt weird about the whole thing. I still don’t quite understand the mechanics of it; all I know is I can’t share my work with family and friends through my typical channels.

So I started texting people with links. And they replied back to me directly: what they thought of the article, how they related to it, some even quoted their favourite line. It was personal and meaningful. The exchanges felt special and rare — a completely different tone from the public comments I got on my Facebook page.

So I was like, okay, fuck you Facebook. You don’t want my links? I’m going rogue. I’ll curate my own feed and communicate straight to those readers, in their inbox, once a week.

Yes, I’d like to show you the recent stories I’ve written. But beyond that, I want to share with you the stories behind writing them.

A follow-up of sorts. A cursory peek behind the scenes. A tangentially-related sidebar.

There’s the published story, obviously, but there’s lots you don’t see:

• Messaging 50 chefs on Facebook to get someone to tell me their favourite taco order. (Harder than you think.)

• Being confused by hypnotists. (Was I hypnotized during our interview!?)

• Hitting Starbucks with friends to taste-test the new fall drinks. (Dream assignment, tbh.)

• Attending my 10-year high school reunion after writing an entire article about why I didn’t want to. (More on that next week.)

Here’s the other thing…

Fifty per cent of my work is fact-checking. It can be a wholly inglorious slog. I often spend upwards of 20 hours checking a single feature (for big magazines you’ve definitely heard of) and there’s almost never any credit attached to them. Just how she goes, as they say.

But I learn so much from fact-checking, and people seem curious about it. So why not write about that, too?

Like, here are some fun facts I learned just this week by clicking around and reading widely.

• You are not supposed to drink the coffee on airplanes

• All-you-can-eat buffets are making a comeback

• The original business card was a bamboo slip in 15th century China

I’m just supposed to sit here with all this random knowledge? No way!

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More next week,

Emily

Ah, to be a skiff in the Atlantic ocean at sundown.