ADVICE FOR SUBSTACK WRITERS

BE YOURSELF 100%

I don’t like giving advice and I am not particularly good at doing so. I have seen other notes and posts giving advice to SubStack writers and have thought about engaging exploring this arena for awhile.

I am far from the most successful writer here so take this advice with a grain of salt. Being “successful” on SubStack is not something I lose any sleep over. As a writer or content creator success to me means what rings true. Chasing numbers or some algorithm to try to gain more readers is as foreign to me as the idea I might gain something from becoming a gambler.

Numbers don’t determine the value a writer possesses. What does determine this is the quality of the readers. And the process that determines what I write is to pose questions and to try to come up with some answers. Here on SubStack many of the best questions are posed by other writers and by readers. It is like taking part in a large complicated seminar.

My sole advice is the advice I give myself, my own children and my grandchildren. This advice is to be yourself. Write what you know to be the truth for yourself. Engaging in trying to find out how to please others is a losing game. Not only will you fail them you will fail yourself.

My advice is to lose yourself in this - to give it everything you have and more. By doing this you and everyone else will rewarded. Rewarded by the experience of taking part in an ongoing dialogue in real time unavailable in any other way. If we do this well it will be living proof that individuals and corporations can indeed work together for mutual benefit.

Your attention is the most powerful thing you have as a person. Giving your attention to someone or something is a super power.

Denying your attention to something is also a super power. Online we encounter many things we don’t like. We can simply ignore what we don’t like or feel to be true. Ideas which fail to attract our precious gift of attention will simply wither and die.

I truly care about those who set aside their own valuable time to even consider what I might say. My respect for them, for their lives, and for their precious time is what is valuable to me as a writer. It affects every word I write.

This being said I also try to cultivate a spirit of independence for myself and for readers. Although I value their time and their views I will not change my own views or slant what I might discuss to please anyone else. In the end I believe we must be exactly who we are. It is the unalienable rights I have and you have as granted by a creator which make this enterprise worthwhile.

The process of learning to both honor my own individuality and everyone else’s is what is the most valuable thing about being here. The degree to which we do this well will determine our own success and the success of SubStack.

SubStack is not a gimmick to me - or something like Twitter or Facebook or Instagram - and I sincerely hope it will not fall into those traps. If it does it will not survive.

People want to engage in open communication - as difficult and problematic as that process is. Free speech is the life blood of a healthy society. Either we understand it together and figure out how to best engage in it or we may indeed be coming to the ignominious end of a good thing.

This enterprise - as are all enterprises really - is about the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Truth as I may see it, as you may see it. We are here to learn. As the creator of our inalienable rights is our witness.