Drawn to the red lights of Notes and Posts...

...which sometimes makes Substack seem like downtown Amsterdam...and that's ok.

“Buy my book!” - “Join my course!” - “Take my advice!” - “Pay to engage!” - “Look at my numbers / income / followers!” - “Subscribe, subscribe, subscribe!”

Browse through your Home page (especially if you identify as ‘a writer’ and follow Fiction & Literature) and you can’t help but feel swamped by pleas for our time and input and money.

Have you ever fed ducks on a lake, especially one swarming with gulls? You toss the food onto the water or into the air and watch the manic scramble. Never enough to go round? Survival of the fittest? Often the duck on the periphery gets nothing. Sometimes Substack feels a little like that; we’re hunting for scraps (aka subscribers / followers / $), yet most of us are akin to the small ducks at the margins.

Too many birds, not enough food.

A vast number of us are drawn in to selling ourselves in order to get noticed, to grab what we perceive as our share of the honey. Posing under the red lights of Notes and Posts (in the ‘shop window’!) we hitch up our metaphorical skirts a little higher, make suggestions and claims, plunge ever-more enthusiastically into the ‘punter maelstrom’ - and often forget why we landed on Substack in the first place. Potentially, and more catastrophically, perhaps we lose sight of why we are - or were! - writing at all.

Interestingly, there are increasing numbers of people posting content asking “what am I doing here?” They find themselves morphed from seeking ‘community’ to being ‘on the game’ without even realising it…

Another subscriber? “Yes!” - Hit that latest target? “Yes!” - The monthly payment from Stripe gone up another $25? “Yes!”

And you know what, that’s all fine - but with a proviso.

Only if you know that’s what you’re doing. If the real reasons you are on Substack are aligned with such ambitions. And if you’re happy doing so.

I suspect there are many people (me included) who risk being seduced by a potential they didn’t know existed. Some of us will talk enthusiastically about community and yet - knowingly or not - fall into 'The Cult of Me’.

Don’t get me wrong; I love Substack. In terms of content, intelligence and integrity it makes X/Twitter and Instagram look like something you’d want to wipe from the sole of your shoe. The reason for the popularity of the platform - and for why people are here - is that it allows us to engage in meaningful debate and conversation, as well as harvest the odd subscriber / follower / connection, or kudos and income.

But you can get seduced by the latter.

I firmly believe that, in a similar way, your writing can get derailed too; you can forget why you’re in the game at all.

I was in a meeting yesterday (not Substack-related) where dozens of writers were bemoaning the fact they didn’t have agents / publishers / an income / a best-seller. And I couldn’t help but wonder how many of them started their writing journey for a completely different reason… Some had been corrupted by the near impossible dream; they sounded bitter, beaten-up, persecuted.

Although a brief experience, it was sufficient to prompt me to reconfirm the ‘why?’ of my writing - as I discuss in:

SHAMELESS RED-LIGHT PLUG!!

From time-to-time we all need to stand back from our writing - or our presence on Substack and the like - and ask ourselves why we’re doing what we’re doing. And to try and land on an honest, authentic answer. And a balanced one. Then we should commit to that. If you want to be a best-seller, then you have to write something commercial, popular etc. Forget ‘great literature’. If you want to be a Substack sensation and make loads of money, then that’s fine too.

But do you? Really?

Ask yourself what the most important thing is: 250 subscribers rather than 200? $450 per month rather than $400? Is there such a great difference? What was the most important thing in your life before Substack?

Or how would you feel if your wrote a book which you knew was trashy and not very good but which sold, versus one that’s your absolute best and of which you can be eternally proud? Surely we need to be straight with ourselves about such things…

Ask ‘why?’ - And when you’ve done that, ask ‘why?’ again…

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