Coming To Substack From Medium? Here's What You Need To Know.

“You attract what you need like a lover” ~Gertrude Stein

“Everybody gets so much information all day long that
they lose their common sense.” ― Gertrude Stein

Sometimes, the best thing a writer can have is a mentor. Someone a few steps ahead on the path, someone who can help you make connections, help you find your way. But even more important? Someone who will tell you the truth even when you don’t like it. Especially when it’s not what “everyone” is saying. Especially those times.

For Ernest Hemingway, that person was Gertrude Stein. He was twenty three when they met and hadn’t written his first book yet. She was forty eight.

It was about this time of year. Early February, 1922, when he walked into the now famous bookstore Shakespeare and Company on Rue de l'Odeon in Paris, France clutching a letter in his hand. It was a personal introduction to Stein, written by American writer Sherwood Anderson. She can help you, Anderson had said.

Hemingway had been working as a freelance writer for the Toronto Star when they sent him to Paris to work as a foreign correspondent. But what he really wanted to do was write novels. Writing for the newspaper was how he paid bills. Not his dream.

That’s a really important point right there. Because a lot of writers don’t clearly define what they want to achieve. It’s scary to admit. So they say well I’ll just write a little bit, see what happens. Problem is, it’s hard to hit a target you won’t even look at.

Hemingway had no idea how or where to start. He didn’t know how to make the connections he needed. And honestly, he didn’t have the temperament. He was a bit hot headed. Stein had the knowledge, experience and connections to help him.

But even more, she had complete belief in him and his writing. From the first minute she met him. Took him under her wing, said I’m going to help you. I’m going to get your name in print. That meeting, at Shakespeare and Company, was the beginning of a twenty four year friendship that would last until the day she died. Cancer.

She encouraged him to start his novel, gave him feedback, edited his writing, and introduced him to people like Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and other major writers and artists of the 20th century. Put him right in the middle of everything he’d dreamed but didn’t know how to achieve.

She was his friend and mentor, the person who launched his career, godmother to his son and she influenced his writing style and career more than anyone who lived.

Here’s why I’m telling you this.

One of the things Stein was fond of saying is that people get so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.

That was before the internet. It’s even more true today. There’s no shortage of advice and most of it is wrong, or wrong for you. Little tip. Don’t look for people who say this is the way. Look for people who say here are some ways, one of these will fit you.

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Right now, a lot of writers are frustrated with Medium and moving to Substack. Maybe you’re one of them. Happened last time there was a mess at Medium and it will happen again next time. And some people do well. If you did well on Medium, you’ll probably do pretty well here too.

But if you’re not, you might start looking for advice. And there’s no shortage of it. Here’s one of the things people are going to tell you. It’s okay if no one is reading. You’re playing the long game. Keep writing. Don’t give up.

That makes sense to people. We all have to pay our dues, right? Except when you’ve been doing it for six months or a year and not making much progress, you begin to wonder. Exactly how long is this game anyway?

Frankly, what you need is better advice.

Here’s another thing people will tell you. Turn on payments right away, don’t wait. Because Substack takes a 10% cut of paid subscriptions, so if they can make money off you, they’ll promote you more. Makes sense on the surface, right?

Here’s what I like to think Gertrude Stein would say if she was alive and on Substack. Really? How much do you think Substack needs 10% of the five or maybe ten paid subscriptions a new writer has? There are writers making thousands or tens of thousands here, likely in the same category you’re writing in.

Now let me tell you something from experience. I have not turned on payments yet, that’s happening by end of January, but when I write a strong post, I get 4-5 dozen subscribers per day. It’s not about whether you have payments turned on. It’s about engagement. That’s what matters everywhere you go. Engagement.

There’s a powerful fact Gertrude Stein told Hemingway about the writing industry and it’s a lesson every writer needs to learn and a lesson I learned the hard way.

Hemingway had given Stein some of his writing to read. When he came back to her apartment, she told him his writing is good, but it’s not good enough to be published in magazines. She also told him the language and sexual content in his work makes it unpublishable. He got a little defensive, said he’s going for authenticity.

So she flatly told him his authenticity is pretty pointless if it makes him unpublishable, doesn’t sell his work, doesn’t get the distribution that would put eyes on his work.

Tell you what that little story reminds me of. Two things, really.

First thing is all the people using the f-word and profanity in posts on Medium and then complaining they’re a bunch of prudes for not boosting it, not giving it better distribution. It’s not about being a prude. It’s about knowing there are thirteen year olds on the site and no content settings.

Hemingway didn’t become a any less impactful when he cleaned up his language.

Here’s the second thing.

You have to understand the ecosystem you’re writing in. That was a lesson Stein made sure Hemingway understood loud and clear. The way you write for a newspaper is not the way you write for a magazine and neither of those is the way you write a book.

That’s a powerful lesson still today because Substack is not Medium. If you come here thinking Substack is like Medium because they look the same on the surface, and they work the same in that you open a blank page and type something and hit publish, you’re going to be very disappointed.

On Medium, people pay their five bucks and follow writers they like. You show up in their feed, or you don’t, but their feed is always full. They read what catches their eye, and move on. Write what you want, and it gets read—or it doesn’t.

Substack started out as a newsletter service not so different than Mailchimp except they published the writing online to help writers become more visible to people that didn’t know them yet. They’ve added social features and video and podcasts and a whole bunch of stuff, but at the root of it, it is still a newsletter. It is still email.

The bottom line of making Substack work is realizing there’s a limit to how many emails people want to get every day, every week. And asking why you should be one of them. And that’s a hard, hard question. But a necessary one.

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Of all the things Gertrude Stein taught Hemingway, here was the most important.

She taught him how to be a compelling writer.

There was a style she used when she wrote and her style was why her first book was met with critical acclaim. It was concise writing. Strip all the fluff. Short sentences because she hated punctuation. She used maybe six commas in an entire book.

She called her style the “continuous present.” She wrote in the present tense and used just enough repetition to keep the focus on the story. She taught him that style.

Years later, writing critics would say Stein created the style, Hemingway perfected it.

If there’s one thing that will fuel or slow your growth on Substack, the strength of your writing is it. You want people to read what you write and say I want that in my inbox. If they aren’t saying that, no other tips will help. That’s a promise.

There are other tips. Most writers are using tags the most inefficient way. Using notes inefficiently. I’ll be writing about those over the next couple of months. But they come later. Because they won’t help if people don’t say omg, I need that in my inbox.

Once Hemingway mastered writing, they moved from a mentor-student friendship to artistic peers. They had ups and downs but what twenty four year friendship doesn’t? But until she died, he never stopped wanting her approval. And she never stopped loving his writing and neither did the world, once they knew his name.

To move people and connect heart to heart, I think, is the highest aspiration of a writer. One worth striving for. I’d love to know what you think.

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If you like my writing, I also write about life, writing and technology on Medium

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“You attract what you need like a lover” ~Gertrude Stein