I started writing in June of last year. I had a thing to say about the overturning of Roe versus Wade, and I wrote op-Ed. Nobody wanted to publish it.
Since that decision went nowhere, and there has been no fall out, I moved on. I guess nobody should have published it, cause it's not going be a major news story. This is an example of satire—saying the opposite of the truth, to make my point more robustly then I would be allowed if I were to write something full of vitriol.
Writing a newsletter is good. It is good for me. Because I have things to say. Frankly, nobody wants to listen to them out loud. Thusly, I write it down. This allows for reader autonomy. If they want read my “things,” in the privacy with their own home, they can. This preserves their dignity in a way autoplay on Tiktok might not.
I got a lot of questions of the process, because it's not usual. It is rare for there to be a one person media company? I am told.
I'm going to answer them, in the format of an interview with myself.
“TFPs” will be the interviewer, from the perspective of “the frontier psychiatrist newsletter”, and OSM will be Owen Scott Muir, the human author of the aforementioned TFPs.
TFPs: how often do you write?
OSM: Every day. It's what I do with most spare moments.
TFPs: on what device do you do the writing?
OSM: 90% is written on my iPhone. The vast majority of first drafts are dictated using Siri. I don't think I've handwritten by typing an article in a long time.
TFPs: doesn't that have a lot of errors?
OSM: yes. It's a huge pain in the neck. I have to go back and edit them.
TFPs: why do you publish daily?
OSM: some of the things that I write, particularly about serious issues in Healthcare, would be the kinds of things that would get me in trouble. So I write a lot, understanding that people won’t read it all, which is very much the point. It’s obfuscating—that is a fancy word that means to hide in plain sight. It’s like a word search in the newspaper? Finding the gems is part of the fun. This is also lead generation for smart and curious people. People suspect I am up to something, which I very much am. So they read more.
TFPs: that is bordering on clever.
OSM: well, it is not likely to go viral, but it’s what is happening right now. I am back solving for what will “work,” with humor and absurdity, in public.
TFPs: that doesn’t sound scalable?
OSM: no, it doesn’t. Ce la vie.
TFPs: why don’t you write a book?
OSM: I have written several! More are coming. Please leave a review. That is called a call to action.
TFPs: I hear I am also a podcast?
OSM: I am afraid so: please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
TFPs: how many people are on the team?
OSM: I have my wife, who I have harassed too often to edit things, and so don't bother much anymore. She's a good editor, but she doesn't like to listen to me dictate. She has good feedback, if often painfully critical, but she's usually not wrong. So if I have a question about something, I ask her. I have an administrative assistant, who also helps me get academic work and some of the other writing out the door, but at this point, she doesn't really have the time to edit someone who writes all the time and every day, so about 80% of the work you read is 100% me. The rest includes edits from my mom (pictured):
Very little of it has any input from artificial intelligence, other than the natural language processing behind dictating.
I use Grammarly sometimes, but occasionally has some very weird glitches and mangles what I was working on. Very strange. Generative AI is fascinating, but it's a terrible writer. Especially when, like myself, you write in the way that is weird.
TPFs: why do you think your writing is strange?
OSM: I have horrible dyslexia. I also have psoriatic arthritis—hate to type. I also have ADHD. I have a lot of impairments, getting in the way of me getting any writing done. I have further impairments getting writing concluded in a way that makes sense to other people. The benefit of this is that I write things that are written differently than most humans. I think, for a cohort who enjoy something with a little bit different, with a different cadence, it might hit the spot?
TFPs: how long does it take you to write an article?
OSM: There is a bimodal distribution. They are either extremely fast, between 20 minutes and an hour, or they can take weeks to months. The shorter the sentences, the more the time I probably spent working on it.
Some of the things are written in a way that can be quite confusing. This is on purpose, for the most part. If I'm writing some thing that I suspect will be dangerous, in that someone might take issue with it if I were to write it more clearly? I default to complex language. More complex sentence structure, more complex verbiage, more footnotes, sub clauses, to make it really difficult for trolls to make their way through. Keep in mind, I'm a psychiatrist, and I have stalkers. So for people who don't have great facility as readers? I apologize. Those pieces are not for you, to protect myself. I try to have fun with it. But complexity is essentially a defense against those who would try to kill me for saying something they disapproved of.
TPFs: wow, really?
OSM: I expect some of my work to end up in legal discovery. In my head, I am giggling a little, to myself, thinking about what it's gonna sound like if somebody had to read it in court.
“What did you skeet and when did you skeet it?”
I know who much of my readership is, and some of them are lawyers, and I know that what I write can be referenced later. Sometimes in court. If I am writing an argument in defense of trans rights to not be murdered, for example, I used high reading level to screen out hateful people with limited English proficiency. I also write in the form of satire because it’s another filter for people to not get it. People who aren’t going to get it are not my target audience for those articles.
I even have a whole parody section of the newsletter about the topic. I'm writing on the side of compliance. There are absolutely things I do not write because they would be incendiary. I've written about another third as much as you see publicly.
TFPs: Some of what you are writing is ammunition for lawyers?
OSM: It is ammunition for advocates. I'm writing pieces that are focused on helping internal champions of change I want to see in the world to make their case. I try not to bludgeon people over the head with that, so it's fun for everybody, but often there is a very targeted audience of decision makers related to a regulation, or a change in policy, or something like that, in my mind. Some of the fun for general audiences is wondering, “who the hell is this even for?”
TFPs: how does that work for the rest of your readers?
OSM: My metrics are kinda bonkers, so I imagine they enjoy it. They are free to tell me. I have about 28-30 reads per subscriber per month. I “monetize” at just south of $5k on just over 2k subscribers, paid OR free. It may be niche, but it's deep niche writing.
TFPs: So that is good?
OSM: I have no idea. It seems good enough. If Puck thought David Foster Wallace needed to up his Weird, but had vastly more language disability, and an axe to grind with healthcare instead modernity, this is probably where we would find ourselves.
TFPs: Thank you, I imagine you take reader questions?
OSM: I do. I also enjoy collaborating! My recent back and forth sessions with
are a good example.TFPs: thank you for the time.
OSM: No, thank you. And, axiomatically given the introduction, me as well.