Nine dumb mistakes we make on Substack
Sometimes the best tips aren't a thing to do, but a thing not to :)
Here’s a funny and relevant story. After Salvador Dali painted his melting clocks piece, art critics made all kinds of lofty interpretations of what that painting meant. The most popular opinion was that the melting clocks were a visual representation of the fluidity and malleability of our human concept of time and space.
Easy to look at those melting clocks and say yeah, I can see that — fluidity of time and blah, blah. What makes it hilarious is how wrong they were. When Dali was asked what inspired the painting, he said watching a piece of camembert melting in the sun, lol.
Like, how human is that? Sometimes, we just do stuff. No profound reason, no deep thinking. We writers aren’t immune to doing things without any deep thought.
I was scrolling the feed the other day and noticed a dumb thing a lot of writers do, and was shaking my head and wondering why they keep doing that when it occurred to me I do it, too. It made me laugh because we’re all just imperfect humans. So I decided to make a list of dumb things I’ve done and see other people doing.
I’ll start with the one that inspired this piece and add the rest in random order…
Note: I don’t write exclusively about Substack, I write about literature, the art and craft of writing, and the feelings and frustrations of trying to make it as a writer in a world of AI. Once a month, I share tips I’ve learned along the way as a monthly gift to paid subscribers. It’s my way of saying thank you so much for supporting my work. 💌
