The struggle to move forward from your own flashes of greatness is real
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Far be it from me to criticise other writers. As far as I am concerned, anyone who takes the time to sit down and write and also has the gumption to put the results out there for others to read deserves credit.
Whether the writing is received well or not – or even noticed – has no bearing on this positive view. What is important is a writer’s personal creativity and their courage to allow us to share in the fruits of their labour.
But let’s be real. Getting recognition and positive feedback for your writing feels good, right? And it’s addictive. If a piece of work is successful, the urge is to identify what made it do so well and to replicate that in your future writing to perpetuate the positive feedback loop.
The sweet taste of success
Recently, a piece I wrote about the nature of creativity was “boosted” on the online writing platform Medium. For those unfamiliar with Medium, this boosting mechanism is part of a programme where the editorial team or an algorithm identifies certain pieces of writing as high-quality and promotes them to a wider audience.
Behind the scenes, the Medium people push their special buttons and wave their magic wands of providence and – BOOM! – the lucky author’s work is displayed on the homepage, in feeds, or in newsletters. Far more people see it than if it had not been given this magic lift, meaning higher levels of that most precious commodity in today’s attention economy: engagement.
In any case, my article was suddenly being viewed and read by hundreds, then thousands, of times by users all over the world. In terms of the audience it reached and the feedback it produced, it became my most successful piece of writing to date within a matter of just a day or two. My subscriber list quickly swelled – along with my pride.
The attention and the praise felt great – as did the feeling that I had managed to touch a chord with so many people.
The pressure is on
As many writers who have achieved sudden, unexpected success with their work will attest, the pressure to extend that winning streak with your following work is enormous.
The author Elizabeth Gilbert has spoken eloquently about how difficult it was to work again after the runaway success of her book “Eat, Pray, Love”. The English writer Claire Louise Bennett has also reported experiencing the same kind of struggle after the publication of the magnificent “Pond”.
In the wake of even this tiny whisper of success, I understand their paralysis. Nothing that I have written since “Me & My Creativity” has ignited even a flicker of interest. And I haven’t been particularly impressed at my output either. It hasn’t sparkled; it hasn’t “lifted off the page” in the same way that writing that I’m pleased with does. Some of it – well, the majority of it if I’m being truly honest – has just been downright rubbish.
Writing with the knowledge of this mini-triumph sitting on my shoulder became prohibitively pressurised and intimidating. A damaging mentality crept in: nothing that could flow out of my brain, down through my fingers onto the keyboard and onto the screen could be even remotely worthy and achieve that same standard. Better to not even bother.
What’s the secret sauce?
Now, I don’t want to be one of those twits who whinges in public about how their writing isn’t getting the attention they think it deserves. This is as pointless as running after a crush long after it’s clear they’re not into you – and about as dignified. I’m not getting into it.
The reason why I’m here today writing all of this is because there’s a larger thought which my current writing mood links into which I think is worth pontificating on.
Looking back at my output over the three years since I started to write more seriously, I found that five other pieces have achieved a level of interest which I would class, according to my own standards, as “success”. Two articles about my relationship to alcohol, a collection of old-fashioned words and phrases in (UK) English, a humorous piece about what the British say and what they actually mean and an article on how I feel about being an INTJ female according to the Myers-Briggs personality test.
Looking at this motley selection of writings, they don’t seem to have an awful lot in common. The most I can surmise about why they did so well is that their subject matter is interesting or relatable for a large audience. Not an especially groundbreaking realisation, but also not a fail-safe recipe that I can follow when I’m writing in the future.
Even more troublesome for pinpointing the reasons for success: I didn’t expect any of these articles to do well when I wrote them. It always came as a complete surprise. The ones I wrote about alcohol in particular were written quickly and quite carelessly – not with the kind of weighing-up and laboured shaking out of each word that you feel should precede writing success.
Why am I doing this?
Six successful articles in three years. That’s a pretty threadbare rate of success by anyone’s standards – if the point of my writing is to maximise clicks, views and reads, that is.
But is it?
Well – yes and no. It would strain credibility and honesty if I were to say that I did not care whether anyone ever read what I wrote. I do, and I’m delighted when it happens.
However, it’s important not to get caught up in those weeds of longing to be seen and heard and praised. And they grow especially fast and tall once you’ve had a positive reader response.
That briar patch might look shady and inviting and like it might be nice to spend time in, but getting stuck there is going to stop you from moving forward and back into confident creative mode.
Getting too attached to the idea of repeating your own success makes you tense. It steers your focus too far towards the potential reaction of your readers at the expense of your inner creative drives telling you to write what you feel needs to be written at this moment, regardless of the reaction it will garner.
In other words: if you fixate too much on generating attention and positive feedback, you risk paying the price with your own authenticity.
And that, in my opinion, is the key to great writing.
On authenticity in writing
There’s a certain assumption that you can only be authentic when writing about yourself. I do not agree. Your writing can be authentic whether it is fiction, or an article about art or politics or something else entirely. What matters is that it is done in your own distinctive tone and voice and is therefore specific – authentic – to you.
Writing in your own distinctive voice sounds easy and like it should just “roll”, but is one of the most elusive and difficult skills to master. It isn’t like opening your mouth and making your voice form the words which your brain instructs it to. It’s trickier than that.
The good news is that the task becomes easier the more you practice it. Yet it is still a relatively rare thing to catch that feeling while you are working where what you are thinking and feeling and what you are producing become one fluid and connected whole. The feeling could last 10 seconds or 10 hours – but, as a writer, you know when it’s happening. You just know. And you live for it.
For, if you know during the working process that what you have written is good and then your readers agree – that is when magic happens.
A word used and abused
And here we have the reason why the word “authenticity” gets so horribly overused and abused these days. In today’s content-flooded world, it is one of the most lucrative qualities you can have. On any given day of the week, in any given medium, one can observe writers, YouTubers, influencers, politicians and other public figures straining to work out the recipe to that secret sauce so that they can cash it in for their own viral success.
The fly in the ointment: you can’t fake authenticity and overtrying will fully negate your efforts to come over as genuine and “real”. You can’t say or write things that you don’t truly feel or enjoy or mean, because your audience isn’t dumb. They will sense your fakery and turn away. And if your own authentic self isn’t appealing to a lot of people and can’t be leveraged to drive a successful personal brand? Well that’s too bad. Try something else. (Meghan Markle, please take note.)
In other words, being authentic means finding out who you are and being that person 100% of the time in all that you do and create. And accepting the consequences.
Just show up
If you’re a writer, this means writing whatever it is that you feel you want to say today – not what you think will garner the most views, clicks and likes.
If something happened today that mattered to you and you think that it needs capturing in words and putting out into the world – sit down and write! Did something catch your attention or inspire you and you want to tell people about it? Sit down and write!
Whether it’s four paragraphs or four hundred pages, written in language poetic or plain, or even complete horsesh*t which gets deleted straight after writing, never to be thought of again (or only with a deep cringe). It matters not — just get it down.
It might be a cliché beloved of every person who ever sat down to write about writing to say that “showing up” is the most important thing in this crazy creative enterprise that fascinates us so unerringly. But clichés are clichés for a reason and that is because there is some truth in them. Consistency – “showing up” – is what it’s all about. It’s what keeps us going, even when the gruel of success is thin.
Keep on showing up with your own voice and your own thoughts and your own unique view of the world. Keep showing up to write the good, the average, the crappy, the slightly better…and the truly horrific.
Enjoy the flashes of success for what they are: beautiful but ephemeral fireworks going off when you least expect, shining bright for a few seconds before fizzling away. Try to hold the memory of them lightly on an open palm.
I’m holding on to that thought as I sit down to write once more.
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