Lemon tree → lemon curd → lemon pie 🍋

• 2025-07-17
• My friend Simmo shared a photo of him holding a lemon with the caption “fallen lemons”, and another friend said “that’d be a good substack name”, and then I said:
  • “There’s something kinda nice there, about writing as like attempting to grow a healthy lemon tree, where for a while you can only grow these like shitty shrivelled fruits, it takes a good long while before the fruits are very plump and juicy”
  • “And the raw lemon might be pretty sour so you have to mix in a bunch of sugar (e.g. using storytelling to make the key ideas more palatable/likely to be consumed)”
  • “You pluck a healthy lemon and are like “I’m really pleased with this lemon how it is, but I know I’m gonna need to sweeten it into a curd or something to make other people want it”
  • “My public notebook as a load of raw lemons vs substack as the place to make the curd, and maybe one day I’ll make a lemon meringue pie 🥧”
    • Maybe a book or more youtube videos or something?
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• ☝️ Simmo’s now-famous lemon photo