No doubt you’ve come across newsletter signups in your forays online. Perhaps you subscribe to some newsletters; perhaps you even put out your own. Certainly, newsletters have become one of the core tenants of a marketing strategy, alongside social media activity.

But I wonder: have you ever stopped to think about newsletters as a new medium not only for marketing but also for soulful, meaningful communication: for sharing art?

A recent article in the New York Magazine prompted me to consider this subject. Entitled ‘Are Newsletters the Internet’s New Safe Space for Women?’, the article looks at examples of women opening their hearts via newsletters, from the Lenny Letter newsletter covering ‘feminism, style, health, politics, friendship and everything else’ to writer Sarah Gallo’s ‘Things I Tell Myself (and You)’.

The traditional ‘news’ letter has moved beyond news; it has become a vehicle for opinion pieces, personal narratives and – most interesting for me, given my job – fiction and poetry. Many people are coming to use the newsletter to share content not given out elsewhere: the newsletter is a private communication between writer and subscriber.

Why choose a newsletter as a medium for sharing? Several aspects strike me as being attractive:

1. There is a simplicity, a quietness, to the newsletter. ‘While not handwritten or personally addressed to each individual, it feels like a throwback to letter-writing,’ wrote Sarah Gallo in the Guardian.
2. The connection is close: from writer’s desk straight to reader’s device. This form of communication is intimate, but the writer stands protected in a way he or she does not in most other mediums; the newsletter is not a dialogue; there is no sharing it online or commenting on it. (The New York Magazine outlines that protection is a key driver for many starting up newsletters who have encountered trolling and abuse online when blogging or sharing via social media.) There are plenty of examples of writers using newsletters to talk about personal subjects, such as child-raising and mental health difficulties.
3. Some who use newsletters for self-expression value the impermanence of their words. Just as not everyone wants every declaration made public, not everyone wants their every declaration to be permanently public. Newsletters go out, and then are gone. Yes, a reader can save one, if so compelled, but there is no public archive. This can liberate a writer to write in the now, and then move on.

The New YorkMagazineapproaches the newsletter from a feminine angle, but I think sharing via the newsletter can be of value to all. When one tires of Facebook and Twitter and Instagram (ad infinitum!), one can turn to a simpler form of connection.

What I love best about newsletters is that you can take the time to craft something of length; you are not restricted to a clever little nugget as on social media. In addition, as I write I feel so wonderfully connected to my readers, because I know that each is invested in what I am sharing. We can easily miss a Tweet or status update by someone we follow on social media, but we don’t miss a newsletter right there in our inbox. And – best of all – we can choose to read that newsletter at our convenience.

You can sign up for my own newsletter at www.hannahfielding.net. If you’d like to write your own, it’s worth exploring Tiny Letter (http://tinyletter.com/), which is a very neat and simple newsletter platform. If you want more tools for your newsletter, I can recommend MailChimp (http://mailchimp.com/). Whichever you choose, you have a choice: will your newsletter be a letter about your news, or will you share something else, something of yourself – something of your art?