Reviews - The Hunt for an Audience
Finding my stance in the post-call-for-action writing era
A few but honest words about how I currently think about writing and the creative writing world - that kind of writing I do mostly for the joy of it.
Somehow, the thoughts both begin and end with reviews.
Purpose of Writing
Almost every letter, every word or phrase, and every comma is put on the virtual paper for a purpose. A common belief is that writing is done for communicating something, or for recording knowledge for the future. Maybe it is so at times, but very often, writing is done for the purpose of attracting attention or selling something.
This way, the written word may not represent any real communication or knowledge but moves into a realm of pure functionality. SEO-writing is an extreme case of this, but most other texts are today written for their function. Many functional texts do have more practical purposes, though, needing good writing and text planning skills, such as technical writing and journalism.
And then there is the rest. The beautiful writing such as fiction or poetry, but also other creative writing that is mostly for enjoying the writing and the written.
I work with the functional writing for a living, that end of the range that does communicate something, and I enjoy the other kinds for what the writing process itself can give me - the sense of creating beauty and connecting with readers who would enjoy such beauty.
The history and where we stand now
When I started writing texts for the Internet many years ago - basically when the Internet was first invented - there was a main focus on finding an audience.
Your blog would be considered a success if it had many readers. Nothing else counted. Well, you also needed to put a fancy background image, a moving JavaScript text and other decorations as they were invented, but for the contents, you simply had to be read.
It didn’t take long, though, before social media appeared, and suddenly, a main goal was to be promoted on these. If you were reading blogs in those days, you may remember how social media sharing buttons started appearing, and it became a necessity to add a bunch of those buttons under each post.
At first, people actually pushed on the buttons to share the posts on their favorite social medium. Be it Facebook, Twitter, or perhaps LinkedIn, you would see many such shared posts. The social media platforms would distribute them loyally, together will all other kinds of contents, to all of their users - that is, all of your followers on the platform and those who liked and interacted in some way.
But after a while, the posts from the blogs got mixed with posts from other social media and each of these platforms began regarding them less good for their business - as they represented a risk of sending users out of the platform. Clicking on a link to my blog post on the competitor’s platform could be bad for the advertising business they were trying to implement.
Today, social media sharing buttons are almost gone. There is still something left, maybe as a menu item for sharing, but the receiving platforms are not distributing them, so nobody will read what you share.
Instead of trying to spread the words you had written; instead of writing so well that your readers would want to share the writing with their friends or their networks, you will now most often put some kind of purpose in the text. A call for action. A link or a button for the reader to click on.
By following this call for action, people can get your free e-book or buy something that you have for sale, or they may sign up for your newsletter. But it is no longer seen as a success to simply have readers. These are only a needed step towards getting customers.
Another way of being successful
It looked like a multi-facetted option. Medium. It was possible to write something, let it find readers who were actually interested in reading it - so you would be able to hone your writing skills to match the dreams and wishes of real people, real readers, not just potential customers.
In fact, you didn’t need to add a call for action. Reading would itself be the action. Writing and publishing would be the call.
There would be money involved as well. Members would pay a subscription fee for the platform, and the money would be distributed among the writers, based on how popular their texts were.
Of course that didn’t work.
Before long, a small group of writers had managed to grab all the money by posting a large number of pointless articles about how to make money on writing articles about how to make money…
Other writers would be able to grab a slice of the cake by writing professionally looking articles about popular current social topics in the USA, giving the boost nominators soft knees so that they would want to promote these articles a bit extra.
Everybody else who were writing on that platform wouldn’t earn much, but because the CEO kept saying that it wasn’t the point at all to earn money, it was just a token of appreciation for taking part, many writers did write anyway.
And additionally, there was the often-expressed idea of having a place to publish something that could then be used as a reference in various situations, such as by job-hunting or telling about your freelance writing business.
Late at the party
I wasn’t in it from the start. Even though I did create an account shortly after the platform opened, I never published anything there. From the start, it had been announced as a place for the really good, the fully professional, not for amateur writers or (between the lines) those who were not native English-speakers.
But a few years ago, I decided to approach the platform anyway, as I saw more and more links to articles there - and they were not all of the Newsweek or Time Magazine type, they were actually all kinds of articles.
Being distracted for a few years by some jobs that had a different focus than writing, I then finally moved in with the purpose of publishing there.
What kind of writer am I?
That’s the point - I like to experiment a bit. While I do hate writing posts about how to make money on writing posts about how to make money, I am actually open to many other styles.
I enjoy language and the sound of it, the rhythm, and how a thought can be developed through several bits of meaning after each other. I like prose poetry, and I put elements of that into much of my writing.
And when writing for myself in some un-bound writing tasks that are simply to satisfy my joy of writing - I often pick a different style than most people would do. And the next article will again be different, and so on.
I want to express the different thoughts I have in the ways that are suitable for them - and at the same time give the readers something new to discover with every article.
So I am not one particular kind of writer. The only consistent element is that I tend to put meaning between the lines. You can never take for granted that the visible words say it all.
The first Medium post
It took me a couple of nail-biting weeks to consider many different ways of getting started, having a much too humble approach to the platform. It still was stuck to my imagination of how it would be to be a Medium writer that I would be judged by readers with high standards and an expectation of me being an American journalist, no matter what I claimed to be.
But I am not that. And in the end, I wrote a text that hinted a bit on how being a writer isn’t a matter of what other people think. It is something that lives inside of you. Whatever expectations the readers have can only contribute to make life more difficult for the writer.
Slightly sarcastic, slightly satirical, and very much a hope to push some buttons of empathy, curiosity, and a wish to help growing that inner expressionist of an experimental writer who is publicly displaying his emotions.
Here is the text in its published form. There was a “Buy Me a Coffee” banner at the end, not reproduced here. The first title was different (“The Writer’s Fears and How Reviewers Can Materialize Them”) and the typography was different, as I was still learning how to use the editing platform. But after a couple of days, I had adjusted it several times, and it became like this:
WRITING
The Writer’s Fears — and Reviewers
…they most likely have no idea about what their criticism will do to you, and how easily you can get demotivated by their quick remarks and thoughtless complaints…
When you want to start writing — be it something in particular or just writing in general: maybe you want to become a writer as a life goal, or maybe you just have this thought or idea you want to develop and write about and give to the world.
When you want that, you will find that it isn’t easy. It is not just a matter of having something to say, knowing the language, how to write, and being good at telling a story. It is also about the reactions from your surroundings. About feedback and mentoring, and the fear of negative reviews — keeping you from trying this out, holding you back.
Those People
Those people, who really should be expected to support you in life and assist you in pursuing your dreams, clearing the road ahead of you from stones, mending your shoes when they break, putting a plaster on your wound when you stumble, or on your blister when you walk too far, encourage your mind when it doubts.
Those people. Your friends, family, colleagues, fellow writers, fellow sufferers of the misery that is the topic of your writing, those with special insight, those who want this story to be told, or, indeed, the very beneficiaries of your journey — your spouse, children, or the people who would really benefit from seeing the world change its mind on a subject; the subject you have chosen to write about.
Maybe you know them as “mentors”, “reviewers”, or “editors”. Or you know them as “friends” or “good colleagues” or “experienced writers who know how to do it”.
No matter what they call themselves, they most likely have no idea about what their criticism will do to you, and how easily you can get demotivated by their quick remarks and thoughtless complaints. Or, perhaps, some of them do have that idea, and they do know exactly how destructive their negative review will be for you — and therefore they do it.
The Belief that Destruction is Improvement
Because, it is a common idea that beating the child will teach it a lesson for life, making it stronger and better at selecting the right options, and doing things right from the start — to avoid getting beaten, probably. Some beating parents, schoolteachers, or bosses even believe that the beaten child should be forever grateful for being beaten.
…perhaps they are thinking that “If it doesn’t kill you, it will make you stronger”…
Many people have taken this way of thinking with them into other aspects of life. Whenever they get the chance, they beat someone, to make that someone stronger. Perhaps they are thinking that “If it doesn’t kill you, it will make you stronger”, feeling that they are doing the whole world a favor by killing off such a prospective writer who cannot write well.
Maybe some of them have a more refined way of thinking, a more detailed view of what the damage they do to you is actually good for. They could think of their deed as comparable to making cracks in your carefully crafted pot of clay — which is all new, still fragile, still needing its glazing and hardening.
The Review — Killing the Dream
But you want some thoughts and some input from a trusted person in order to make this beauty you have created so far become as close to perfect as possible. So, you carefully carry it to them, with both hands, making sure that the pot will not get scratched or, the thought itself is almost scaring you to death, fall on the floor and get crushed!
…they do not see your vision … they see only an unfinished and fragile thing that has no value in their eyes…
Your carefully chosen reviewer for this then takes the pot with a roughness and carelessness that you wouldn’t have been able to imagine, even in your wildest nightmares — and cracks it! They do not see your vision of the perfect pot, that drew you through the work so far, they see only an unfinished and fragile thing that has no value in their eyes; a useless piece of crap.
And they may then think that if they crack it, they are doing you a favor because you then have to spend time and energy on mending it — and during that process, you may discover many new details and possible improvements that you were not aware of from the start. Until they helped you.
This could happen to you.
This will happen to you.
I am almost certain that
it already did happen to you.
So, they destroy your dream on purpose to force you into misery, and from that misery, they expect that you can develop a new and better product, not a dream.
Postscript
The next time they see you or your pot, it will be finished. You will have gone through a lot of work, and a lot of frustrations, to make it look like a pot again, and in the end, you may be happy about the result. But you will, definitely, not seek your evil reviewer’s advice at any time during that process.
…there is, unfortunately, also a risk … that your trusted reviewers end up scaring you away from your dream…
You will know that you managed to do it despite their evil review, not because of it. And they will believe that they made this masterpiece, because, without their invaluable help you would have been happy with less — your ambitions alone were not big enough for doing anything big.
There is, unfortunately, also a risk — a big one, I would say, based on experience — that your trusted reviewers end up scaring you away from your dream, making you believe that you do not have the talent or the strength to go through with it to completion. You will then get back to the flock, no longer sticking out with the hope that you could somehow do something good and noteworthy.
And they will have killed the dream and, in their eyes, saved the world. They will never think back and regret that terrible crime they committed.
What to Learn from This
And this, my dear fellow writer in spe, should make you think twice before you let anyone see your half-finished work for an early review.
Even if they have the best of intentions, they will not see or understand even a fraction of the many thoughts and considerations you have already put into it. They will not see your dreams and visions; they will not understand how being cruel and destructive towards this fragile little baby of yours can actually ruin your life.
May you choose your reviewers wisely and get a magnificent career in writing!
The response
What happened next? At first, nothing, and I was beginning to think that I shouldn’t have done it. That I should have stayed away from Medium.
But then came a comment and some claps, as the idea of “like” is called on that platform. And then some more.
Even though this article never really took off, never went viral or anything like that, I did feel some friendly verbal hugs by fellow writers on the platform.
It was great to be able to publish something that wasn’t meant to sell anything. Something that was what it was in its own right. Literature, not functional text. Not copywriting.
This way, I continued with many more articles of different types, and I learned that I was not an influencer, not a top writer, not popular. I was just a small writer on a platform with millions of writers, of which a few handfuls were cashing in big-time.
I still had fun there, though, and I was recommending the platform to others, making sure to tell that it was a nice place for people who liked to write. The potential of earning money was nice, but it wasn’t anything to count on.
Along the way, some fellow writers from the Multilingual Writers Community clicked in to join, partly inspired by my enthusiasm for the platform.
One of them took on her shoulders the big and impressive task of reading all my posts, analyzing my writing style and other qualities, and to give me a full analysis report of one of the articles - the one I showed you just before.
It was a while ago, but I have been thinking ever since about her comments and suggestions. Of course, there is a solid portion of irony in reviewing a text that tells how reviews can be destructive. But then again, maybe exactly this is a way of making the text embrace itself, becoming a full circle of expression.
All in all, I was very happy about the review, which somehow also marked the top of my journey on Medium.
Not long after, I had a break (in several ways, as I more or less broke down due to a mix of Covid, too much work, and some other tough life conditions), so I stopped writing on Medium for a couple of months. And when I tried again, there was no response. Medium had lost interest in me.
Moving on
About 30 years have passed since I wrote my first article for the Internet as part of a website I had then created. Since then, I have been through more or less all kinds of writing, all kinds of articles that have been in demand or praised as the next thing.
But today I have found some kind of rest in the feeling that I know the game and I don’t like it too much. The internet cannot be avoided. It has the same status in most people’s lives as weather or time. Something that we may like or not, but it is there, nevertheless.
However, trying to avoid the negative elements by not lending myself to being a victim of different platforms’ distribution mechanisms, the algorithms, I am now more interested in simply writing what I have on my mind. Then there may be few or many readers for it, but I will no longer hunt for claps, likes, and other lightweight reviews - I will rather allow myself to be positively surprised whenever someone decides to express their appreciation for anything I wrote, or their reflections on it.
Medium is no longer in my focus, social media have themselves no focus on writing, so there are platforms like Substack left for me to work with. And so far, I enjoy that writing is at the center of Substack while algorithms have less importance, even though it does look like it is true what some people say: you need to bring your own followers with you to Substack (and I don’t have that many to bring).
All this, of course, mostly relevant for my creative writing, as I very much enjoy writing professionally for companies - mostly technical writing - that can end up just about anywhere, including on social media.
In the hope that I someday will be ready to publish books, I have kept an eye on the book market and noticed how a desperate hunt for reviews is taking place in that part of the writing world. A book without reviews will not sell, so getting as many reviews as possible seems to be the way to success.
And that will be a dilemma for me. Because, I don’t like the hunt for reviews, but what is a writer without an audience? An article with only a few readers is one thing, but a full book?
I have been at a musical concert once where the few people in the audience walked out, leaving only me there. The band was very disappointed, and even though I applauded as much as I could, they decided to stop the concert. I understood them very well. And I would feel the same when having put all my efforts into a book and then seeing that nobody was reading it.
So, I guess that I at that time will have to start hunting again. But until then I’ll focus on enjoying the craft of writing.
And a few calls for action :)
I offer technical writing and other writing work on flexible terms - per project, in an on-going engagement, delivering end-to-end planning and writing or being part of a project. Whatever is needed, and with a preference for remote work.
You can find my Substacks at inidox.substack.com, my Medium page at medium.inidox.com, and my company website at www.inidox.com - and I am communicating on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/jorwin/.
This was super interesting for me, both because I was actually late to the Medium party and because I'm often on the reviewer side of things.
About the first idea: Gosh, how I hate writers who write about making money with writing. It's like reading the same post over and over again. As far as I know, there are two versions of it. A) Don't worry about your audience, write what's on your heart, and the millions will come, and B) Write for your audience and write nonstop. And none of them are actionable or true.
About the reviews, it was humbling to read your opinion. I try to keep in mind that there's a real human behind the text who worked, sometimes for years, to write the book I'm reviewing. Tough love is often just a socially sanctioned way to be mean.