So, yesterday I made a mistake.
Instead of writing my usual ramblings and posting it onto my website, I decided to write a few posts on Quora. I did this for two reasons:
What I found was that I absolutely hated this. While my posts on Quora did get more viewership (88 views to be exact), nobody upvoted or commented on it, meaning that exactly 0% of people gave a shit about what I wrote.
On top of that, writing the Quora posts felt like a chore. They weren’t interesting, I didn’t have any real connection to them, and after an hour of writing, I felt mentally drained.
So I decided: if I’m going to write every day, I’d rather write something that’s interesting and leaves me feeling mentally stimulated, even if it means that very few people are going to read it.
The truth is that blogging is dead. People don’t read this style of writing anymore. When I first set out on this daily writing challenge, I figured that if I stayed consistent, I would gain momentum and figure out how to get people to actually read it later. As it turns out, the “staying consistent” part was easy, but the “getting people to actually read it” part is much more difficult.
I was listening to an interview this morning with Mark Manson. For those who don’t know Mark, he is the author of the NYT #1 bestseller The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck. The book is massively popular; it has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. In the interview, he talked about how he got his start by writing a blog about dating advice for men. He was urged by his friends to start it, so he did. He then went on to try to make money writing blogs about other random topics (like teeth whitening, for example) and quickly realized that he didn’t have the same passion for it. Even though he could write other blogs to get a broader readership, he didn’t enjoy it and the writing wasn’t very good. So he went back to writing about what he did enjoy, which was dating advice for men.
I found it highly serendipitous that I would listen to this interview the day after I had tried my little Quora experiment because the parallels were uncanny. I think the truth is that if I had to just answer Quora questions every day to build an audience as a writer, then I wouldn’t want to do it. I would just simply stop because it’s not a meaningful or creative outlet for me.
So, that being said, I have a new mission in mind: to write well.
That’s it. I’ve decided that I don’t really care how many people read what I write, as long as I continue to improve as a writer. This will however require me to do things that I haven’t done thus far, like creative storytelling, research, etc. But this at least gives me a purpose and direction for why I’m writing every day.
I recently saw a quote (I can’t remember where) that basically said, “If we all worried a little less about being big, we’d end up being a lot bigger.”
I don’t know if that’s true. But what I do know is that in the modern attention economy, too many people are focused on how they can get people’s attention. As a marketer, I am well aware of the techniques and methods that people use. But there does come a point where it ends up hurting you. By constantly seeking the attention of others, you end up becoming a caricature of what they want you to be, as opposed to something that is true and honest to yourself.
I do believe that by becoming obsessed with attention-seeking, you also can’t develop a style that is unique enough to stand the test of time.
So that’s what this next month will be about: developing my craft as a writer.
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So, yesterday I made a mistake.
Instead of writing my usual ramblings and posting it onto my website, I decided to write a few posts on Quora. I did this for two reasons:
What I found was that I absolutely hated this. While my posts on Quora did get more viewership (88 views to be exact), nobody upvoted or commented on it, meaning that exactly 0% of people gave a shit about what I wrote.
On top of that, writing the Quora posts felt like a chore. They weren’t interesting, I didn’t have any real connection to them, and after an hour of writing, I felt mentally drained.
So I decided: if I’m going to write every day, I’d rather write something that’s interesting and leaves me feeling mentally stimulated, even if it means that very few people are going to read it.
The truth is that blogging is dead. People don’t read this style of writing anymore. When I first set out on this daily writing challenge, I figured that if I stayed consistent, I would gain momentum and figure out how to get people to actually read it later. As it turns out, the “staying consistent” part was easy, but the “getting people to actually read it” part is much more difficult.
I was listening to an interview this morning with Mark Manson. For those who don’t know Mark, he is the author of the NYT #1 bestseller The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck. The book is massively popular; it has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. In the interview, he talked about how he got his start by writing a blog about dating advice for men. He was urged by his friends to start it, so he did. He then went on to try to make money writing blogs about other random topics (like teeth whitening, for example) and quickly realized that he didn’t have the same passion for it. Even though he could write other blogs to get a broader readership, he didn’t enjoy it and the writing wasn’t very good. So he went back to writing about what he did enjoy, which was dating advice for men.
I found it highly serendipitous that I would listen to this interview the day after I had tried my little Quora experiment because the parallels were uncanny. I think the truth is that if I had to just answer Quora questions every day to build an audience as a writer, then I wouldn’t want to do it. I would just simply stop because it’s not a meaningful or creative outlet for me.
So, that being said, I have a new mission in mind: to write well.
That’s it. I’ve decided that I don’t really care how many people read what I write, as long as I continue to improve as a writer. This will however require me to do things that I haven’t done thus far, like creative storytelling, research, etc. But this at least gives me a purpose and direction for why I’m writing every day.
I recently saw a quote (I can’t remember where) that basically said, “If we all worried a little less about being big, we’d end up being a lot bigger.”
I don’t know if that’s true. But what I do know is that in the modern attention economy, too many people are focused on how they can get people’s attention. As a marketer, I am well aware of the techniques and methods that people use. But there does come a point where it ends up hurting you. By constantly seeking the attention of others, you end up becoming a caricature of what they want you to be, as opposed to something that is true and honest to yourself.
I do believe that by becoming obsessed with attention-seeking, you also can’t develop a style that is unique enough to stand the test of time.
So that’s what this next month will be about: developing my craft as a writer.
