Slowing Down with Rachel Schwartzmann

Author of 'Slowing'

Welcome to another interview series at The Library Booth. This month, I’m excited to introduce you to Rachel Schwartzmann, author of Slowing, due out this September. Rachel’s also the writer of Slow Stories, a multimedia project that explores living, working, and creating more intentionally in our digital age. I adore Rachel’s Substack and have been following her journey on Instagram for over ten years. Her dedication to slow living leaves me feeling optimistic for all of us crammed into the several multifaceted corners of the digital landscape. The amount of information out there is overwhelming. Rachel’s perspective can help us all sharpen our vision. Slowing down allows us to finally see clearly.

First off, welcome! It's a pleasure to have you, as I've been a follower of yours ever since your blog, The Style Line, was born back in 2013. And now, I'm a fan of your substack/podcast Slow Stories. In this digital age, I feel like there's been article after article about how our attention spans have shrunk down to, like, 3 seconds. However, you strike me as someone who seems to crave a long-form format, which I admire so much. How do you keep your attention span intact and spend time slowing down to actually read a longer piece - whether it's on Substack, a whole novel, or elsewhere?

Thank you for having me! This is the question—and work—of our lives, right? For me, it really depends on the day.

With the explosion of social media, there is a collective yearning to indulge in longer works, which is why so many of us have (re)turned to places like Substack. But interestingly, I don’t always equate long-form storytelling as the be-all and end-all.

A couple of years ago, WePresent asked me to write about the rise of “Snippet Culture,” which explores the value and role of fragments from larger (creative) works—and I was so glad to be able to reflect further on the relationship between length and depth. As I wrote in that piece, I’ve often been wholly engaged in a single episode from a television series, a story in a collection, and so on. That’s not to say context is irrelevant or that I don’t love/crave long-form work, but I think more than saying I’m going to read this to strengthen my attention span, I just follow my (literary) curiosities and accept where they lead me, whether it’s towards a poem, a novel, a blog post, etc.

But tangibly speaking, I simply budget time in my day to slow down and read things that might require more focus (mostly at night in bed, which feels like a luxury).

I'm really excited about your new book and counting down until September 17th! When you introduced your book to your audience on Substack, you mentioned a phrase I hadn't heard before: 'The Slow Content Movement.' Can you tell us a little more about that - what it means exactly and why it's important? 

Again, thank you! I can’t believe September is already around the corner…

The slow content movement is adjacent to other “slow” movements (think slow living or slow fashion). It prizes quality over quantity—conscious pacing versus speed—in both creation and consumption. For me, this movement or practice is also a gut-check in terms of my intention. Why am I creating, consuming, or giving so much attention to this piece of content, media, or art? I always say that we can’t be slow 100% of the time—and the digital landscape is embedded in our real lives—so this movement/idea helps me filter out what’s worth paying attention to and when. I can’t think of anything more important, especially now.

How do you break out of a creative slump?

I’m actually in a bit of a “slump” right now… though I’ve found it’s helpful for me to reframe slump as something like break or pause, which carries a more neutral connotation and allows me to see it as integral to my process—and humanity. But whatever you want to call it, I usually get going again by either totally stepping away from a project (guilt-free!) or diving in and quite literally making my way through it.

What are you reading right now?

I’ve been working my way through Jami Attenberg’s 1000 Words and just finished Sally Rooney’s forthcoming novel Intermezzo and Gabriel Smith’s debut Brat. I also visited London for the first time in June and came home with a few treasures, one of which is Lauren Elkin’s Scaffolding (out this September in the US). I think I’ll start that one next.

Preorder Slowing here.