Weird Post About Writers And "The Truth" About Finding Success

Someone else's "truth" isn't necessarily your truth. Nor should it be.

It’s six in the morning and I’m reading Substack. I’m tired, not because it’s six in the morning but because of the storm. Last night I basically slept in an advertisement for the next Frankenstein movie. Wildly unreal thunder and lightning.

Thunder so loud it rattles your bones, bolts you awake. Lightning that lights up the whole room in a way makes you expect to see Jamie Lee Curtis screaming in the next flash of light or maybe Jason or Freddy Kruger. Glance over at the clock, it’s some weird time like 2:34 or 3:13, makes the hair on your arms stand up, wonder if this is real, if you are real, if anything is real, and then you fall back asleep.

Woke once, 2:22, opened the back door and stood watching the storm thinking how a storm shows you something about the force of nature. We think we’re above nature, and then she laughs. Think to myself I’d like to be a force of nature, like that.

So anyway, six a.m. this writer says she’s wearing xl pants and an xs top. Says that’s not an aesthetic choice. It’s just — women’s sizes are Schrödinger’s cat. We women are all sizes until we put on a pair of pants and I’m laughing. This is why I like her.

She makes me laugh, makes me mad, makes me feel. Sometimes I learn new things from her. She says stuff I can relate to. Unless she’s writing about Ohio politics which I don’t relate to at all but I don’t read those. (Sorry not sorry) That’s the glory of being a reader. We can read what we want. And we do. We all do. Worth pondering.

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Earlier this week I read a post where a writer talked about “who” succeeds on Medium vs “who” succeeds on Substack. Even quoted one of my posts, where I said I thought a post should have been boosted but wasn’t. Called that out to prove Medium is a big old garbage can. My words, not his. Said listicles and trends do real well on Medium, so if you can follow trends and write listicles, you’ll do real well. Which struck me as hilarious because I do pretty well on Medium and I don’t write those at all.

I’ve been lucky enough to have some pieces do three figures and I’ve managed to hit Medium’s “top reads” a couple of times and they weren’t listicles either. But this ain’t about he said, she said. It’s about the danger of generalization.

I think it’s dangerous to postulate on “what” does well on any given platform because it makes an assumption about writing skills and a bunch of other things.

If I say fiction does well on Vocal or personal essays do well on Medium, that assumes everyone writes fiction or personal essays at the same level, if you know what I mean. But they don’t. Not everyone is equally engaging. But that’s real slippery ground to talk about, you know? Ice rink in office shoes level slippery. Gets people real mad.

Like one person who gets so mad, says she’s a good writer and she is, but for me, I think a 2 minute personal essay lacks meat on the bone. But it’s subjective. Some people think a five minute read is TL:DR. Humans are weird animals.

Some of the people who are struggling on Medium are also struggling on Substack. Some of the people who are struggling on Medium are kicking butt on Substack.

Let me give you an example. Someone who writes sex education on Medium? They’re going to have a very bad time. Because Medium won’t boost that. And they won’t boost it not because it’s bad or taboo, not because they’re a bunch of puritanical so and so’s, but only because they don’t have age filters and don’t want sex-related content to land in the feed of some thirteen year old.

Because you might be thinking clean and family friendly sex-ed, while someone out there is writing topics that you really do not want your thirteen year old reading. So yeah. Maybe that will do better on Substack. If the writing is good. And engaging.

Last week I read a post by a woman who thinks they ought to kill the BNP, which means Boost Nomination Program. She said just show my stuff to my followers, okay? Which made me laugh.

Because sure. Except your followers all follow three hundred or five hundred or a thousand other writers and the odds they see you using your preferred system are slim to none. And if Medium did that, you’d find some way to blame them anyway. Because we all like to be armchair coaches, saying how it ought to be in our humble opinion which is usually not all that humble and leans more to indignation.

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Let’s talk about another loaded topic that shoots writers in the foot. Titles. Some people write titles like news headlines. Other people write like they’re book titles. And look, I get that it’s personal preference. I do. But also? Let’s play pretend, okay?

Someone goes to Medium and on the homepage they see two posts. One of the posts says “If Boomers Had It So Good, Why Are They Greeters At Walmart?” — and right under that, there’s a post called “The Tree” — what do you think they’re going to click on? Like, I don’t mean to be rude, but titles matter.

And if you happen to like short titles, for heaven’s sakes please make your subtitle work a bit harder.

But there’s a caveat to that because there’s a caveat to everything. Life is made of caveats stitched together like Frankenstein’s monster.

Here’s the title caveat. Your name.

Seth Godin doesn’t write titles worth crap. He writes titles like Kazoo Lessons, and Plasticity, and Sudare sette camicie. And no one cares. Because he’s Seth Godin.

I, however, am not Seth Godin. So I try use titles you can’t not click. Like the boomers one above. That was me. And No One Tells You The Hardest Part About Aging, and Does Aging Really Make Women Of A Certain Age Invisible?

Because you know what? I’m a slow writer. Sit down and pound out a draft only to realize there’s three different pieces in there. So I gotta pull out the separate bits, paste them into other drafts. Figure out how to finish each of them. Finish, and realize it kind of sucks. It’s weak. Need to sleep on it. Edit again. And a third time.

Seems to me a damn shame to spend three or five or seventeen hours on a post and bury it with a crap title. Write a eulogy for that thing, I done killed it with a crap title.

Point being, it ain’t about which platform. Might not even be the writing. Maybe your writing rocks and your titles suck. Or maybe you used an image we’re sick to death of seeing because it was on page one of Unsplash and every time we see that picture the story is whining. So you didn’t get the click. And no one knew how good it was.

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One more. A few years ago, Medium published a list of the top read pieces for the year. Was the first time they did that. Now they publish the top reads monthly. But it was the first time. I sat and looked at that list. Wondered what it would take to write something so many people want to read. Looked at those pieces like stars shining in the sky. Wondering what it might feel like. To be one of those writers.

So then I went into my own stats. Sorted by views. Wondered if I could learn anything. Cause I read, once, that real growth doesn’t come from competing with other people. Comes from getting a little better than who I was yesterday.

Tell some people that, they get mad. Because no. It’s that Medium hates them. There’s some shadow ban list and somehow they got shoved on it. Or the curators suck or the nominators just pick all their friends, don’tcha know. Or something that spells give up the ghost it ain’t happening because the world hates you personally, might as well go eat worms. None of which is true, but if you believe it, might as well be.

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Best I can figure, determining the “truth” is a lot like trying to nail jello to a tree. Doesn’t stick and just makes a damn mess. Plus, you go hungry.

Best I can figure, success as a writer isn’t something we achieve on our own, it’s a gift other people give us. And it’s more likely to happen if our questions stand taller than our opinions and our curiosity stands taller than our ego.

But maybe that’s just me wearing my Pollyanna rose colored glasses again or too tired cause the storm woke me up all night. I dunno. But I’d love to hear what you think. Cause I swear I learn as much here as what I teach. And thank you for that. :)

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On Medium…

• Is Neil Gaiman Guilty Of Assault And Does The Truth Even Matter?

• If Boomers Had It So Good, Why Are They Greeters At Walmart?

• I Asked ChatGPT How To Earn $1000 Online. It Was Hilarious.

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