No One Asked is three years old

So of course I wrote a whole thing about it

The first movie I wrote about/how I look when I’m passionately describing the plot of some movie

On October 24th, 2021, I sent out the first No One Asked missive. It introduced the whole concept of this newsletter, which essentially boils down to “I write about whatever I can’t stop thinking about because I’m very obsessive.” I said I wanted to write the opposite of hot takes, about things that did not fit into the whole concept of a personal brand. And you know what? I feel like I’ve held true to that initial declaration.

Most people will tell writers to start a newsletter as a way of building their platform/audience/mailing list/brand. And that’s good advice, I think. But I had zero—and I mean zero—interest in starting a newsletter that’s just about book promotion, and that’s for one reason: as a reader and a writer, I want to read about other things. I mean, yes, of course it’s a good idea to let people know when your book is on sale or when you’re going to be at a festival, but the newsletters I actually click on—the ones I look forward to—are typically about other things. I love R. Eric Thomas’s newsletter because it usually involves some funny anecdote about his day and it makes me laugh. I love Alicia Thompson’s newsletter because she writes with detail and passion about the media she’s interested in, and she gets into detail (this post about A Cinderella Story is one of my personal favorites, and I’ve never even seen that movie!). I love Carson Ellis’s newsletter because she showcases various art she does and talks about her life.

I have a paid tier for No One Asked, and I do make a small amount of money from it, but the main purpose of this newsletter is more personal. I believe very strongly in the benefits of putting yourself out there as a writer by doing your own weird little projects. This has paid off for me time and time again, in ways that I could never have aimed for or dreamed of. One of my first big-exposure writing opportunities was a YA column for HelloGiggles. You may say, “Well, Kerry, that’s not really a personal project because it’s for another website,” but let me tell you what it was like back then. No payment and no editing. It was the wild west! I wrote literally whatever I wanted. I did not check with anyone beforehand. I didn’t pitch anything. My pieces were certainly looked over, but I don’t recall any actual edits. This changed when they were acquired by a larger company (then they paid and edited and actually cared what you wrote about). It is incomprehensible to me now how much time and effort I spent writing about a different YA book every week for, essentially, the thrill of it, but the thing about early 2010s Kerry is that she had an insatiable work ethic. I was taking on extra jobs just to feel alive. The point is, though, that my work at HelloGiggles, weird as it may have been, was a big factor in why my very first publisher wanted to work with me (“writes for HelloGiggles” stayed in my author bio for a long time).

And then I started the Tumblr A Year of Romcoms, where I watched a romantic comedy every week for a year and wrote about it, noting the tropes and whether or not it successfully made me believe in love. No one asked me to start that Tumblr, but people did read it. In fact, my first print editor read it, discovered I had a book out digitally, and asked about acquiring print rights. That happened because of the blog. And then the idea for Waiting for Tom Hanks, by far my best-selling book, came directly from what I learned (“learned”) from that blog.

But maybe even more importantly, it introduced me to a lot of people. I know some of us have known each other since the HelloGiggles days or since the A Year of Romcoms days (some of us have even known each other since my now-defunct Wordpress blog, whoa). I’ve said this before, but one of the biggest joys and motivations for writing, for me, is connection. I love the actual act of writing very much—I’m not someone who says “I hate writing but I love having written.” I don’t really understand that attitude…if I hated it, I would just find another job to do. Probably one that was a little more reliable. This is my dream job, the one I’ve been chasing ever since I knew it was an option. But as much as I love the writing itself, getting that writing published and being able to connect with readers is always the end goal. It starts with me, but it has to end with you to feel successful.

Obviously writing and publishing books is my main thing, but books take time and involve a lot of solitary hours. It’s important to me to be able to publish my own thing more frequently—one that doesn’t rely on anyone else’s approval or editing (all respect to editors because my books VERY MUCH need editing, lol). It’s important to me to have a thing that’s mine, even if No One Asked for it.

Also, as much as Substack is not a perfect platform, I’ve had a great experience using it. I get far, far fewer random argumentative people than I did when I writing on other platforms. I (of course!) always welcome differing opinions on whatever entertainment I’m talking about here…one of the fun things about movies is that we all have our own feelings on them. But what I don’t like is when people who have never commented before get mad about something I said and then try to start a fight. That happened a lot when I used to blog and it was really exhausting! I mentioned this on Instagram recently, but once on my old blog I read a book about Carly Simon and then wrote a post about how it made me mad at James Taylor, and then that post was shared on a James Taylor Reddit and they all got mad at me and kept commenting. It was funny but also annoying. I haven’t really had to deal with that kind of thing here and I’ve only ever deleted maybe one comment. I am allergic to people trying to start arguments in bad faith and I will never engage with them.

I don’t pay much attention to the stats on the newsletter because, while I do have vague hopes/goals for subscriber counts, the entire point of the newsletter is that I write about what I want. I’m not chasing high view counts. And I’ve written so many posts here that I kind of forgot about a lot of them. So I thought I’d take a look now through my old posts and guess what…I was surprised.

My first movie post:

Children of a Lesser God. What can I say, I’m a stan for this movie. Also, it’s a great fall pick…it’s moody and windy and gray.

The most-viewed post:

By a huge margin, it was this post on Little Women (1994) vs Little Women (2019). And by a huge margin, I mean it was viewed almost four times as much as my other posts. I honestly had no idea, but it makes sense. The most-viewed post after that is the one about the video for Shape of My Heart, which really got some comments. Listen, the people want one thing, and that’s a lengthy discussion of a BSB video from the year 2000.

The least-viewed post:

Honestly, it was any time I posted something that was solely an update about an e-book sale or a book event. Lol. This is an essay-based newsletter, not a promotion-based newsletter, okay?

Film genres I have named:

Men Are Useless Cinema is a perennial favorite for me and me alone, I fear. I just love a movie where the men are there but they’re either screwing things up or being completely useless (Terms of Endearment, Steel Magnolias, Mona Lisa Smile, many many other examples). My personally most-watched genre, though, is Nothing Happens Cinema. I wish this would catch on worldwide so that I could easily find more films I would like—whenever someone recommends a movie to me and says that nothing happens, I feel seen.

My most niche post:

A tough category because there’s a lot of competition, but I’d have to give the edge to this post where I ranked the men of Grantchester. This was one of those posts where I was like, “girl what is the point of this” but I’d been ranting to Hollis for like a week straight about these awful men. He even agreed with me. I just couldn’t shut up about it. There are no comments on this post because why would there be. Sometimes you just have to get something (anger toward a fictional hot vicar) out of your system. We still haven’t watched more of this show, by the way.

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And now, it’s time for a few questions!

What’s the theme for the No One Asked birthday party? Okay, this one’s easy because it should be every three year old’s birthday party theme: the film Children of a Lesser God. The playlist will be Jump (For My Love) by The Pointer Sisters on repeat. Everyone will wear sweaters and trench coats and get in non-stop arguments.

Will you be doing more readalongs? I love, love, loved my experience reading Crossroads and posting about it here for Franzen Fall, so the answer is yes. Right now I’m thinking of doing John Irving January (these posts will involve alliteration as long as I can make it happen) and reading The Cider House Rules. I read A Prayer for Owen Meany and The World According to Garp way back in high school and although I don’t remember much, I know I loved them. I think John Irving has a lot in common with Jonathan Franzen (long books, takes on American society, extremely weird and memorable sex scenes) but his books are, in my memory anyway, significantly warmer. And perhaps more accessible? At any rate, people seem to feel fonder toward John Irving than they do toward Franzen. Stay tuned for more details about that when we get closer to January. Also, I think I’ll be doing more book content in general because the Franzen posts were so fun. One book I really want to reread is The Shunning by Beverly Lewis, because I remember that being a wild ride when I was a kid/reading Amish fiction from my small town library. Also I have a post planned about Now is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson, a book I absolutely loved.

Do you have any fall-themed movies or books that you like to re-watch/read at this time of year, or ones that you plan to watch/read? A great question. I had big plans to watch and rewatch all kind of stuff this month for spooky season, but the vibes were not right (way too sunny). I’m hoping that November will have more of what I call Twin Peaks Weather (trees swaying, gray skies).

There are many obvious choices I could tell you about, but I’ll spare you the You’ve Got Mail recommendation because you know that already. So here’s one that I think is VERY underrated: Autumn in New York, starring Winona Ryder (yay) and Richard Gere (😡). This movie doesn’t, like, “make sense” or “feel romantic” but I LOVE IT. It’s so beautiful and features a really wonderful Halloween party at Anthony LaPaglia’s house. It’s giving you exactly what it promises: Autumn in New York. I am a big fan, these days, of weird, dramatic love stories over rom-coms, and this one delivers. There are parts of this movie (namely the Halloween party) that actually do feel a little Ephronian. I wrote about it at length here.

As for books, the best fall reading experience I ever had was when I finished The Saturday Night Ghost Club on my couch on Halloween night. This book isn’t scary so much as a little spooky and very sad, in a “looking back at childhood” way. Every year I think about rereading it but I haven’t yet.

Who’s on your “hear me out” cake? I’ll admit, I had to look this up because I’m not on TikTok but the point is…who is your weirdest, most surprising celebrity crush? I have a lot (see: this entire newsletter) but I was reminded of one of my weirdest when I looked back on that Autumn in New York post. It’s Chris Kattan from SNL. Like, imagine cutting into my cake and it’s just Chris Kattan dressed as Mango. Okay, but hear me out…

Can you recommend some Christmas movies? Just like with fall films, I don’t want to recommend the essentials that we’re all watching already, so here are a couple that are maybe a little off the beaten path:

Holiday Affair (1949). It’s about a single mom who’s trying her best! It features Robert Mitchum as the love interest, and I was into it. It’s very festive (a department store at Christmas!) and Janet Leigh is so cute. A Letterboxd review called in a “hetero version of Carol,” lol. Kinda accurate.

Eileen. If you want to feel grossed out at Christmas. I don’t know your vibe.

The Shop Around the Corner. Not really a deep cut but always my recommendation. I know there are some Ephron/You’ve Got Mail fans who haven’t seen this earlier version, so if that’s you…make it happen this year! You’ll love it. Jimmy Stewart is even more charming than Tom Hanks. Also it features one of my favorite silly lines: “I just don’t believe in mixing bags with pleasure.” Oh, and it’s sad. A perfect Christmas film.

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Okay, that’s it for this week! Thank you for reading No One Asked, whether you’ve been here from the beginning or just started reading. I appreciate your subscriptions, paid or not, and I REALLY appreciate you sharing the newsletter with your friends and/or on social media. This is a very fun part of my week and I’m happy that you read it. :)

I’ll be trying very hard to get the monthly roundup out on Monday because I can’t even think past Tuesday. Yikes! See you next week. Deep breaths. xo