Great post. I agree that writing should be done for the craft or art of it first and foremost. As some have said in the comments: some are great at promoting themselves or spend an inordinate amount of time promoting. Others get lucky (as you stated here in your post).
I think if your work stands on its own merit you will find an audience organically or may have to put on your marketing cap and promote yourself a bit, which is hard for some.
I personally am not a fan of the writing for money movement; it doesn’t work for me. A lot of the folks who succeed in that arena seem to have the same formula in that they have some trick to make money with writing (the good old fashioned pyramid scheme).
Write because you have something to express. Express what you can beautifully and effectively. The universe most often takes care of the rest.
I like this part “ Write because you have something to express. Express what you can beautifully and effectively. The universe most often takes care of the rest.” on what you said. The best way to avoid any burn out towards our craft. Beautifully said.
Absolutely inspirational piece! I was hooked from the very first word to the very last. You have a way of speaking to people's hearts and minds simultaneously. It's beautiful!
What you’re describing is the ‘halo effect’, which highly attractive and charismatic individuals experience daily, where the Matrix willingly bends around even the most prosaic spoons they offer the world. But more than that, 98% of people who succeed in life are those who are extremely skilled in bullshit. They enjoy eating it, cooking it, spreading it on toast, selling it in garage sales, talking it around the water cooler - every last drop of steaming diarrhoea they can rinse out of life that gets them ahead, and it works.
I’m also an extreme outsider and have had this same dialogue with myself ever since joining Substack, something I actually regret because I think I was vastly better off in the purist, isolationist headspace in which I wrote my first two fantasy novels. I wonder why I bother talking to anyone on here when my work is of token interest to a few, I’m not making any real connections and am absolutely no further along with my goals.
Being in the public eye is like being a heroin addict. Yeah, you might be fucked up, but you can always quit and go to rehab, then come back with a story. Your punishment for being well-adjusted or doing what society tells you is more work for no recognition, paying taxes to subsidise the lives of those who get everything they want by dint of who they are.
I had this idea for a satirical short story the other day where a disenfranchised author takes a bunch of people hostage and his release demands are for people to read and review his book, but the police just decide they’d rather take their chances breaching and letting him kill the hostages, because they can’t be assed with that. ‘If he’d asked for $10 million dollars and a helicopter, I could have pretended. Fuck those people, I’m not reading a book that isn’t an Amazon bestseller.’
The 'halo effect' comparison is an interesting one, and I definitely see how it applies to the way certain individuals seem to glide effortlessly into recognition. And yes, the art of ‘selling’ oneself, whether through charisma, connections, or sheer audacity! often seems to outweigh pure skill or substance. It’s a frustrating truth, but one that makes sense when you observe how success is often less about merit and more about positioning.
I hear you on the isolationist headspace…it’s a strange paradox, isn’t it? Putting our work out there with the hope of connection, only to sometimes feel more disconnected. That last bit about the satirical short story made me laugh 😂, though—it’s dark, but it kind of encapsulates the absurdity of what it takes to get attention these days. Maybe there’s some truth in the exaggeration. Thanks for sharing your thoughts❤️there’s a lot to unpack here!
Amazon certainly does give you the option to read inside the book, and the Kindle version of mine has the first four complete chapters available. I just checked it now and it’s all right there, ready for your perusal. Even the paperback version has the first six pages, which is enough for an initial sampling. I’m not quite sure how you arrived at a brick wall there, the ‘read sample’ button is below the cover on both counts.
Never mind an excerpt, pinned to the top of my Substack page is a link to my YouTube channel, in which I have a playlist of the first three chapters, painstakingly narrated by myself for those who don’t feel like reading prose on a screen.
‘Words/stories sell themselves’.
No - drugs sell themselves, to quote Chris Rock. Words and stories are sold by the person writing them, and many of us find ourselves right back at high school trying to win futile popularity contests against incumbent prom queens. I write poems on here because it’s the only format short and punchy enough for the average reader to bother with. I’m not running for office so I don’t have to pretend I’m not pissed off at the way things are going on any given day, in spite of a variety of efforts I’ve put in. I can only lead a horse to water, I can’t make it drink.
That’s fair enough, I appreciate you at least having a look at it. However, I will say that creating an original, dazzling hook that can encapsulate a 215,000 word / 550 page book in under three paragraphs is a steep requirement even the best writers would struggle with, and not a commercially performative rubric to which I shackled myself. But anyway, the point is it’s your choice and if you didn’t like it, that’s just how it is - no hard feelings about it. My search for an audience continues.
I really appreciate your perspective! It’s refreshing to hear from someone who writes purely for the joy of it and doesn’t feel weighed down by self-doubt or the need for recognition. That kind of detachment can be freeing, and I admire that approach.
I do agree that luck plays a huge role in whether someone becomes widely known or not. It’s one of those unpredictable elements that no amount of skill or effort can fully control. Your comment adds another layer to the discussion, showing that fulfillment in writing doesn’t always have to be tied to being seen. Thank you for sharing!
That’s an interesting question. I think for many, recognition isn’t just about validation—it’s about feeling heard, like their words have meaning beyond themselves. I think because we as creatives, recognize ART, we see it in our work, hence it can be why we sometimes feel the need for people to see it too. I suppose it’s less about needing recognition and more about connection. That you are not alone in seeing the world that way you do. For other perhaps, it may have something to do with how they were brought up. It is a complex thought, one I cannot speak on for everyone, it varies. Glory is subjective.
That is an interesting take. And I agree, one wouldn’t be able to write if they don’t have the talent. And looking at your perspective, yes perhaps that is why people long for recognition.
Great post. I agree that writing should be done for the craft or art of it first and foremost. As some have said in the comments: some are great at promoting themselves or spend an inordinate amount of time promoting. Others get lucky (as you stated here in your post).
I think if your work stands on its own merit you will find an audience organically or may have to put on your marketing cap and promote yourself a bit, which is hard for some.
I personally am not a fan of the writing for money movement; it doesn’t work for me. A lot of the folks who succeed in that arena seem to have the same formula in that they have some trick to make money with writing (the good old fashioned pyramid scheme).
Write because you have something to express. Express what you can beautifully and effectively. The universe most often takes care of the rest.
I like this part “ Write because you have something to express. Express what you can beautifully and effectively. The universe most often takes care of the rest.” on what you said. The best way to avoid any burn out towards our craft. Beautifully said.
Absolutely inspirational piece! I was hooked from the very first word to the very last. You have a way of speaking to people's hearts and minds simultaneously. It's beautiful!
That’s kind of you to say! thank you so much. I’m glad it got your attention. This way, we’ll be even, as your work always get mine. 😊
I've just been a bit busy with all the overtime they have me doing! I'm catching up on reading little by little. I very much enjoy your work!
What you’re describing is the ‘halo effect’, which highly attractive and charismatic individuals experience daily, where the Matrix willingly bends around even the most prosaic spoons they offer the world. But more than that, 98% of people who succeed in life are those who are extremely skilled in bullshit. They enjoy eating it, cooking it, spreading it on toast, selling it in garage sales, talking it around the water cooler - every last drop of steaming diarrhoea they can rinse out of life that gets them ahead, and it works.
I’m also an extreme outsider and have had this same dialogue with myself ever since joining Substack, something I actually regret because I think I was vastly better off in the purist, isolationist headspace in which I wrote my first two fantasy novels. I wonder why I bother talking to anyone on here when my work is of token interest to a few, I’m not making any real connections and am absolutely no further along with my goals.
Being in the public eye is like being a heroin addict. Yeah, you might be fucked up, but you can always quit and go to rehab, then come back with a story. Your punishment for being well-adjusted or doing what society tells you is more work for no recognition, paying taxes to subsidise the lives of those who get everything they want by dint of who they are.
I had this idea for a satirical short story the other day where a disenfranchised author takes a bunch of people hostage and his release demands are for people to read and review his book, but the police just decide they’d rather take their chances breaching and letting him kill the hostages, because they can’t be assed with that. ‘If he’d asked for $10 million dollars and a helicopter, I could have pretended. Fuck those people, I’m not reading a book that isn’t an Amazon bestseller.’
The 'halo effect' comparison is an interesting one, and I definitely see how it applies to the way certain individuals seem to glide effortlessly into recognition. And yes, the art of ‘selling’ oneself, whether through charisma, connections, or sheer audacity! often seems to outweigh pure skill or substance. It’s a frustrating truth, but one that makes sense when you observe how success is often less about merit and more about positioning.
I hear you on the isolationist headspace…it’s a strange paradox, isn’t it? Putting our work out there with the hope of connection, only to sometimes feel more disconnected. That last bit about the satirical short story made me laugh 😂, though—it’s dark, but it kind of encapsulates the absurdity of what it takes to get attention these days. Maybe there’s some truth in the exaggeration. Thanks for sharing your thoughts❤️there’s a lot to unpack here!
Amazon certainly does give you the option to read inside the book, and the Kindle version of mine has the first four complete chapters available. I just checked it now and it’s all right there, ready for your perusal. Even the paperback version has the first six pages, which is enough for an initial sampling. I’m not quite sure how you arrived at a brick wall there, the ‘read sample’ button is below the cover on both counts.
Never mind an excerpt, pinned to the top of my Substack page is a link to my YouTube channel, in which I have a playlist of the first three chapters, painstakingly narrated by myself for those who don’t feel like reading prose on a screen.
‘Words/stories sell themselves’.
No - drugs sell themselves, to quote Chris Rock. Words and stories are sold by the person writing them, and many of us find ourselves right back at high school trying to win futile popularity contests against incumbent prom queens. I write poems on here because it’s the only format short and punchy enough for the average reader to bother with. I’m not running for office so I don’t have to pretend I’m not pissed off at the way things are going on any given day, in spite of a variety of efforts I’ve put in. I can only lead a horse to water, I can’t make it drink.
That’s fair enough, I appreciate you at least having a look at it. However, I will say that creating an original, dazzling hook that can encapsulate a 215,000 word / 550 page book in under three paragraphs is a steep requirement even the best writers would struggle with, and not a commercially performative rubric to which I shackled myself. But anyway, the point is it’s your choice and if you didn’t like it, that’s just how it is - no hard feelings about it. My search for an audience continues.
I really appreciate your perspective! It’s refreshing to hear from someone who writes purely for the joy of it and doesn’t feel weighed down by self-doubt or the need for recognition. That kind of detachment can be freeing, and I admire that approach.
I do agree that luck plays a huge role in whether someone becomes widely known or not. It’s one of those unpredictable elements that no amount of skill or effort can fully control. Your comment adds another layer to the discussion, showing that fulfillment in writing doesn’t always have to be tied to being seen. Thank you for sharing!
That’s an interesting question. I think for many, recognition isn’t just about validation—it’s about feeling heard, like their words have meaning beyond themselves. I think because we as creatives, recognize ART, we see it in our work, hence it can be why we sometimes feel the need for people to see it too. I suppose it’s less about needing recognition and more about connection. That you are not alone in seeing the world that way you do. For other perhaps, it may have something to do with how they were brought up. It is a complex thought, one I cannot speak on for everyone, it varies. Glory is subjective.
That is an interesting take. And I agree, one wouldn’t be able to write if they don’t have the talent. And looking at your perspective, yes perhaps that is why people long for recognition.
😊😊 I'm happy to hear it resonated with you. Joan. The contradictions that comes with our passion. What tragedy, right? Haha
oh I Appreciate this. Thank you! I will definitely keep this in mind. For next time 😊
Hahaha i realise but was too sleepy to delete my response lol