My Stories Suck
That’s what you’re telling me
Damn. It hurts, doesn’t it?
We put time and energy into writing content. We ship it. Press publish. Submit to a publication. We hope it resonates with an audience.
We think it will! We like the work. At least, we think we do? If you’re like me, you don’t publish unless you like the message, or are at least generally happy with how it turns out.
If you’re like me, you edit the work. You re-read it.
But if you’re like me, you also second guess the work. You wonder if it’s really bad after all. Especially when no reads come in. ESPECIALLY when Medium doesn’t curate it into topics.
I recently published tips for writing great emails. I spent weeks working on it. Mind you, sheer time spent does not make writing good. It just makes you more invested in how it resonates with people.
Over the years, I’ve spent a lot of time helping friends and family craft emails so they actually get replies. New grads keep asking me about this, too.
They ask because once upon a time I worked with a career coach. He helped me network to find my first, second, AND third jobs.
Learning about networking and proper communication opened up a lot of doors for me in my mid-20s. I’ve always been happy to sit down with friends and give them tips to do the same.
But — my time is kinda limited these days. So instead, I thought I’d write all the amazing tips I have and things I have learned through trial and error and put it in a post.
It flopped.
It flopped so hard!
I published it on a Monday morning to crickets.
I thought Monday would be a good day for an email post.
Was I wrong?
Here are my stats:
Under 100 each. Blerg.
There’s still a lot about Medium I don’t understand. Maybe the work wasn’t even good. I don’t doubt that I could keep editing my work. We could edit for days, weeks, months. I’m actually not a great speller, and sometimes I miss grammatical errors. But hey, isn’t that what Grammarly is for?
The whole point for me on Medium was to get comfortable writing in my own voice, and to ship as much as possible.
I admit, the low reads is discouraging. My ego hurts. When my ego is hurt, it’s harder to ship.
You feel me?
I came here to chat with you to get this nasty ego out of my way.
So what if my stories suck lately? Maybe they do. Maybe they don’t. Who cares.
I’ll keep writing. Because that’s the point.
Curated or not.
