Writing About Writing Is More Lucrative than Writing

It’s a consequence of living in an era where people are famous for being famous

Hello Everyone!

Sorry about that weird word salad of a title, but it popped into my head the other day and I felt I just had to use it. I’ve done a couple articles recently in which I expressed some dismay over the “famous for being famous” contingent of the writing community.

I don’t mean to disparage that group because it’s very important to develop a following. My only regret is that learning how to develop a following has become a full-time job. Some of the “following focused” writers offer excellent tips that are vital for anyone who wants to learn the ropes of writing for the internet.

I’d just like to see them also produce a poem once or twice a week. Heck, throw one in at the end of the article. Put it in after the “important” call to action. Give us a haiku or a limerick. Come on!

It just strikes me as a little problematic that apparently the best way to get a following is to offer tips about how to get a following. If anything, that might offer a commentary on the true sorry state of our society. Everybody is looking for a side hustle because they’re terrified that their basic needs won’t be met.

That’s another thing I think about more often now that I’m 50. In the United States, we spend our whole lives under the shadow of a predatory health care industry. That industry seems content to let us get to work relatively unmolested when we’re young because it knows it will get us when age starts to catch up.

Malicious.

I intend to die in a foreign country simply out of spite. The predatory US health care industry can’t have my money (not that there’s much of it). Ha ha!

In addition to the writers who write about “gaining followers” there are quite a few authors out there who are famous for writing about “productivity.”

“Productivity of what?”

“What do you mean?”

“What exactly are you producing?”

“I’m producing articles about productivity!”

“Arghhhh!”

I think “productivity” must be one of the more popular tags on Medium. For those of you who don’t know (and it’s a lot of you based on the submissions I see), Medium allows you to put 5 tags on every article. These tags have some sort of magical property that makes the internet shove the articles into the faces of the right people. Kristina does a great job explaining all the tags here.

Oddly enough, it’s the business related tags that seem to get people all excited. It’s like they approach their computer with the mindset that they’re not wasting time if they are there to research “productivity,” “sustainability,” “entrepreneurship,” “artificial intelligence,” and “marketing.” Then, after two seconds, they end up scrolling through cat photos like the rest of us.

Tim Denning has built an admirable following on both Medium and Substack by hacking this mindset. Using the word “hack,” or better yet “how to hack,” is a great way to get followers for some reason. From my perspective, most of his articles start off as if they’re going to offer a grand insight into “productivity” and then he just spins off into regular old storytelling.

Good for him, because when you come right down to it, how many “brain hacks” or “productivity hacks” are there?”

I suppose the whole idea of writing about writing is a way of capturing readers who don’t normally read. This is like an election strategy that aims at all the people who can’t be bothered to vote in any election (which is the majority of people).

Question: How do you get people to read who don’t want to read?

Answer: Trick them by disguising your writing as an article on productivity.

I’m not innocent either. I certainly try to follow in the footsteps of the writers who know how to get their work seen. I do like to think that the ambition to create something literary comes to the surface in my work at least every once in a while.

Every now and then I say, “To heck with it” and I write something that I think is beautiful for the sake of beauty instead of followers. Like this one. But even with that one, I went through the bother of picking out a word salad title like the distribution algorithms tend to like (you can’t write just a title anymore).

I suppose you have to take the good with the bad. We live in an exciting era in which it’s never been easier to get your work in front of eyeballs. People can read your work and the author can get paid without the reader having to ever send the writer any money. That’s nice because it’s distasteful to talk about money.

But to take full advantage of that mechanism, you need somebody who knows how it works. Unfortunately it’s complex, it’s ever-changing. New tricks are discovered every day and old tricks lose their power. So, the simple fact is that there’s a need for full-time workers who discuss how to gain a following.

I need them! They do the hard work and I read their notes and I try to implement just enough so that I can get readers to look at my stuff. When my kids get old enough, I might put them to work learning the ins and outs of getting a following. I expect that they’ll be making 100K a year within six months, while their dear old dad is still biting his lip trying to recall the perfect word that dances tantalizingly close but forever out-of-reach.

Fine! If they’re making 100K a year, fine! Awesome! Good for them! More power to them! Go! Go! Go!

But I hope, at the end of the day, when they’re exhausted from carrying all those briefcases full of money around, they understand they can sit back, pull out a notebook and scribble down a few words of poetry!

Otherwise WHAT’S THE POINT?!?!

Every now and then we need to give our followers something beautiful. It might not help for growth, but I think it must help for retention. “Retention” isn’t a tag on Medium, maybe that, too, tells us something about modern society.

Here’s my Medium tips for today:

• Always follow Medium members who are “Friends of Medium:” They tend to be awesome folks, and their reads pay more.

• Don’t answer your comments until you’ve written an article for the day: I had a couple boosts last week and there were so many comments to answer that I didn’t have energy left to write my article. You can answer comments on your phone when you’re out doing chores or whatnot. When you’re at your desk, write articles.

• Write your first articles as if you’re writing a letter to the editor: When I first discovered Medium, I found it was a great place to leave an answer to irritating news stories I’d discovered. I am the type of person who can leave a three page comment. Don’t do that. Write an article instead.

Best to all of you! As always I look forward to your comments!