Writing Is Scattering Stars In The Dark

What Gary Vee said about growing an audience, and a little experiment

When I was little, no one knew I couldn’t see because I could see enough to get by. So mama let me run wild and Daddy taught me to ride his Appaloosa and everyone let me be, because they assumed I could see more than a foot away and I grew up like Mary Oliver’s little wild thing that had never been to school. But then? School.

I remember Daddy leaning against a desk too small for him to sit in while teacher said John, she can’t read the blackboard from the very front desk and I remember how he turned his head and looked at me with his eyes wet and shook his head gently.

Then we got in his old truck and Daddy didn’t say anything for a while and finally, he said why didn’t you tell me you can’t see and I said but Daddy I read books all the time, I didn’t know and when the man put glasses on me I cried because I didn’t know what seeing clearly really meant until I could.

Which is a strange metaphor for life, I think. We don’t know what we don’t know.

I think it’s also how we learn to write. Not just type, you know? But write.

At least, that’s how I learned to write.

When I first started writing it was all fiction and poetry and I had a lifetime’s worth tucked in a folder and one day it was gone which is a whole story itself but I didn’t write for a long time after that. When I started writing again it was essays and wow, they were so bad. I grimace, remembering.

An editor at Medium once told me almost everyone who starts writing essays starts with memoir or grief and I found that interesting because I did too. I started by dumping all my pain on the page but I didn’t know how to turn it into art yet.

Let me tell you why I’m telling you this, okay?

I watched a short clip where Gary Vaynerchuk said social media as we know it is dead. He said we’re living in the era of interest media now and building a following will become easier than it’s ever been.

He said the way the internet used to work is that you had to build a following slowly and painfully and the people who followed or subscribed saw what you created and it was this slow and painful way to grow. It’s not like that anymore, he said.

Algorithms are doing better at interest based matching, he said, and you can have a teeny tiny following and create something that reaches more people than you ever dreamed of. More people than he can reach despite his giant following.

But it comes down to interest based matching.

When I thought about what he said, I realized I’ve experienced that.

Most of the time, I’m lucky if my posts bring me five or ten new subscribers. But I wrote one (on compelling writing) that brought me 700 new subscribers.

Seven hundred new faces? Wow.

He gave me a new perspective because everyone says it’s a long game, it’s a slow game, keep going. And Lord knows, I have. Took me four years to get a thousand subscribers. And here he comes along saying nope, doesn’t have to be that way.

See the image at the top of this piece?

It’s called Spring Scattering Stars and it was painted by Edwin Blashfield who was born back in 1848 and what he’s most known for are the murals he painted on the ceiling of the Library of Congress Main Reading Room in Washington, DC.

Sometimes I think that’s what writing is. Scattering stars.

So we can see in the dark.

Back when I was writing self indulgent diary posts disguised as essays, Dad was still alive and dying slowly from a tumor in his stomach. He was in the very early stages of Alzheimer’s and ninety nine percent of the time he was all there, you know?

Like, so early we didn’t know. Until that one day.

He’d gone to a senior’s outing and was taking a cab back because he liked to be independent except he forgot my address and I got a call from a taxi driver saying your dad is crying in my van because he forgets where he lives.

And I cried my face off until he got home and I hugged him so long it made him laugh because I wouldn’t let go and I made sure that never happened again.

But then someone on a site I was writing at made a joke about “old-timers” so I wrote a piece saying please don’t say “old timers” that’s my dad you’re talking about and I shared the heartbreak of watching a parent lose their memory and wow did it land.

Scattering stars. You know?

I wish I could share that piece but it was at a writing site that’s now defunct, and it’s one of the few I didn’t save before they went belly up. Which is a side note — please save the work you are most proud of because you just never know.

Ram Dass said we’re all just walking each other home but what he didn’t say is half the time we’re walking in the dark and sometimes another person’s words resonate so deeply that a piece takes on a life of its own. And I’m not sure that’s a new thing, but it’s a new perspective to think it doesn’t have to be such a slog to grow. You know?

And honestly, I’m not that great at it. Most of my posts bring me five or ten new readers, if that. I have some that brought two. But I have a few that brought hundreds.

If I’m being honest, I think it comes down to two things. Topic and titles.

But I’m not sure. I don’t know that I’m right.

What I do know is that a lot of people have a lot of crazy ideas about what works and I keep hearing people say you have to write about Substack or Medium or teach something to have a post take off but that hasn’t been my experience.

My top posts are about the human experience, mostly. About aging and and my struggle to build a life of words and (of all things!) about Hemingway. lol

It makes me curious to know what’s landing for more people than just me.

Not much value in a study that only assesses one person. lol.

If you’re game to play along with a little experiment, I’d love to know the piece or two that brought you the most new subscribers on Substack. Doesn’t matter how many, because we all have different sized audiences. I’m just looking for the personal wins. The ones that brought more subscribers compared to the rese.

If you’re game to play along, just drop a link in the comments. Then I’ll write about it in a couple of weeks. See if we can figure out the magic in our top pieces. Scatter a few more stars in the dark. I’d love if you’d join in, and thanks!

Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations