A Weird Thing Too Many Writers Do

It’s like Rumpelstiltskin in reverse. They start with gold and spin it into straw and here's what I mean by that...

Here’s how I start most days. I pour coffee, open the window and load Medium. Then I start looking for stories to nominate for a boost.

I’ve always read over morning coffee anyway, even before there was a boost program and before I was part of it.

Let me tell you a crazy thing. I discovered that it feels really uplifting to start the day with an email that says “story accepted for a boost.”

I’m the boy with the starfish. Do you know that story?

One day a boy was standing on the beach throwing starfish into the ocean. The tide washes them on the beach and if they don’t get back in the water, they die. An old man comes along and sees him. Shakes his head and laughs. Boy, you can’t make a difference, he says. Look at all the starfish, he says, pointing along the beach.

The boy looks at him. Looks at all the starfish. Then he bends down and picks one up and throws it in the ocean. To that one, he says, I made a difference.

The other day a man posted a comment on one of my old Substack posts. Said he was ready to leave Medium. To just stop writing. But then someone boosted his story. He’s not leaving yet, he said. The dream ain’t dead yet. Because some random stranger stumbled across his work and believed in him.

I didn’t tell him, but it was me. I threw that starfish back in the ocean.

It’s hard to explain, but in a world full of bad stuff and more bad stuff, the planet dying, people dying, book burning, gay bashing, racism, doom and gloom everywhere you look, there’s me with my damn magic wand sprinkling light on people.

First, I start with my publications. Check to see if there’s a great piece in History of Women or a stunning book review in The Book Café.

Sometimes, I get lucky. It feels great to nominate my own writers. But my publications are small. I don’t get multiple submissions every day. So I tag surf, looking for a story that has something special. You know? The kind that makes you feel something.

Doesn’t much matter what it makes me feel. I’m not looking for anything particular so much as just something that stands out and makes me say wow, that’s good writing.

I noticed a weird thing a lot of writers do.

It’s like Rumpelstiltskin in reverse. They start with gold and spin it into straw, and here’s what I mean by that…

They turn every experience into advice.

How to deal with trauma. How to know if your spouse is a narcissist. How to accept your body. How to, how to, how to —as if their experience can be painted on the rest of us, but in reality that’s not how anything works much less life.

And the ones who don’t? They just dump their experience. Like a diary entry. Here. This happened to me. It’s even a tag with a whopping 59K stories.

I get it, sort of.

I once read that most of us would rather do almost anything other than self reflection. A lot of writers are introverts who prefer to be alone, but that doesn’t mean we like to be alone with our thoughts. Or look at them too much.

One morning I stumbled across a story that hit me in the feels.

It was written by a man whose dad was an alcoholic. Instead of writing some poor me, my father was an alcoholic and ruined my life like so many people do in their personal essays, he wrote a beautiful piece about a summer road trip with his father, singing along to Johnny Cash who battled the same demons as his dad.

It was beautiful and poignant and came from a place of honesty that can only be reached through reflection. He stared into the long shadow that his dad’s drinking cast on the whole family and what he saw was a boy who loved his daddy.

Someone once said writing is seeing and the more I read, the more I agree.

If I could tell every writer one thing, it would be this. Stop with the advice. We’re drowning in advice. What works for you or me doesn’t necessarily work for anyone else. Dig a little deeper. That’s where the treasure is buried.

Also?

I haven’t used all my nominations this month. I have three left. If you know of a great story that was published in the last few months and didn’t get the love it deserved, feel welcome to share a link, I’d be happy to come read. :)

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On Medium…

• Good Storytellers Do Five Things ChatGPT Isn’t Even Capable Of

• It’s About Darn Time Men Stopped “Helping” With The Housework

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xo,
Linda