The platform won't save you

If you’re struggling as a fiction writer, this is for you

I see many of my fellow writers on Substack struggling and I’d like to dedicate this post to them. I’d like to encourage them, or you, if you’re struggling. Although I haven’t been extensively published as a fiction writer, I have been working at it for almost forty years, so I’ve seen a few things, made a few mistakes, crashed, and recovered.

One recurring situation I’ve seen is a young (or inexperienced) writer struggling to navigate an unfamiliar social structure, feel lost, lose hope, and want to give up. Decades ago, those structures were writer conferences, college writing programs, magazines, and the publishing industry. Today, those structures are social media, online book retailers, and platforms such as Substack.

All writers want to give up at some point.

You will want to give up because writing seems so easy to them. You know who they are. Those writers on that platform. They are more prolific. Their writing is more vivid/funny/memorable/muscular/topical/edgy. They post multiple times a day. They have hundreds of followers. They have fourteen books out on Amazon and you are still struggling to get past your first plot point.

Screw ‘em.

Writing is hard for everyone. If someone implies that it’s not, they’re lying. If they say that they have the secret to being an absolute writing god, they’re lying. If they say that their strategy, available right now for a low monthly subscription, contains the secret success formula, they’re lying.

Screw those guys.

Writing is difficult.

Fiction writing is difficult.

It’s so difficult because, on top of everything else, you will probably not survive on writing fiction alone.

Don’t want to believe me about making money? That’s OK. Everyone can point to their favorite success story. But if you dig a little, you’ll see the publishing reports. See the best sellers that sold a few hundred copies. See that book sales are down, fewer people are reading books regularly, TikTok attention span, blah blah blah.

Writing fiction sucks.

On top of that, living as a fiction writer takes commitment. Like, running a marathon commitment. Like learning how to fly a plane commitment. Like speaking German fluently commitment. Can you walk one marathon? Sure. Can you hold the yoke of a Cessna 150 for a minute? Probably, if you ask the pilot nicely. Can you say “Auf wiedersehen?” Yep, you just did, in your head. But that doesn’t make you a marathoner, a pilot, or bilingual.

All those activities require commitment.

Writing fiction, especially, requires commitment.

It sucks. It’s not fair.

But it’s OK.

You’re going to be OK.

You’re going to be OK because you’re going to do this one thing.

You’re going to schlep back to your day job on Monday, or you’re going to start schelepping for a job. You’re going to reconcile yourself to the fact that most fiction writers, throughout history, have held down day jobs. C.J. Cherryh. Walter Mosley. Kurt Vonnegut. Raymond Chandler. Heck, basically any modern writer had a trade, vocation, or career that was separate from fiction writing. Many of the greats, if nothing else, had jobs as a stringer or correspondent. If you don’t believe me, try digging a little deeper into the background of writers you admire. You’ll find cashiers, construction workers, cab drivers, bank tellers, public school teachers, and people who sold shoes. Sue Grafton was a hospital admissions clerk. Did it wear down her soul? Probably. But she did it.

Surprise: Your job will make you a better writer.

It will give your writing depth and make it more vibrant. You will find stories there, characters there, settings there. It will help you to accomplish one of the things that all young/inexperienced writers seek: to have your own voice, your own milieu, your own stories.

You will feel a lot better. You’ll have less stress. You’ll have other sources of stress, of course, but the important thing is that you won’t have the stress of trying to make a living from your writing. Of looking at the blank page and thinking, “I am so damn hungry right now but I have no food and I have a pounding headache but I can’t lie down because have to write this damn novel and will you kids please shut up for five damn minutes.” Or the pressure of spending your life online. Of making the magic number of posts a day on various social media sites because you need to be engaged there because you’re desperately trying to monetize your presence.

While we’re at it, screw social media.

The secret to success as a fiction writer is that there is no secret.

That said, I do have some tips to living as a fiction writer and not killing yourself with unreasonable expectations or shaming yourself for not doing what everyone else is doing. The first tip can be expressed in two words:

Sustainable pace.

Sustainable, meaning you will find a way to write, little by little, day after day. You will carry a spiral notebook. You will have a note-taking app on your phone. You’ll carry a little digital recorder. You will learn to keep a story going in the back of your mind while you’re talking to your coworkers or driving to the dentist or waiting in line at the supermarket. You will learn to have the story on simmer, on the back burner, and take notes in the spare moments, so that when you have that time you’ve set aside each week to write, you’ll have a sentence, a paragraph, or even an entire page already written, and that will be the hot coal that you’ll use to ignite that writing session.

You will learn to outline or sketch out a story in advance, so you have a sense of where it’s going, of where the characters need to be, so that you’ll have eliminated some of the dead ends, and so when you sit to write, you won’t be floundering for a starting point. You will make that five minutes in the Wal-Mart parking lot or the half hour at your kitchen table a focused, productive session.

Pace, meaning your word count. Because your day job pays the bills, you don’t have to sweat through extreme word count targets. On Tuesday you’ll make progress because there’s this snippet of dialogue you overheard and you wrote it down because it fits with your character. On Wednesday you realized there’s a new way of describing your character’s reaction to coffee and you quickly noted that and that led to three pages of narrative. On Thursday you didn’t write a damn thing but you opened your notebook and were present, with your writing, for thirty seconds, while you sat on the toilet. That counts, too.

Your pace will be slow or it might be fast. Well, honestly, it will be slow. It will be slower than the pace you think other writers have, and maybe you’re correct, but you know what? You’re not those other writers. You’re you, and you have your stories and your characters. All athletes are built differently and all writers are built differently, too. You might work in terms of 100 yard dashes or you might work in terms of leisurely dog-walks. The point is, you will find a pace you can sustain, day in and day out. Five words or a hundred words. Word count matters not. Putting in time each day matters.

Second tip: You will also stop worrying about platform. You will begin to understand that any platform will work, but only if you keep at the platform. You will realize that all platforms have flaws and it basically doesn’t matter which one you use. Just pick one that your readers use. If you’re not engaging with readers on the platform, then you need to change your platform strategy or expend energy elsewhere.

The point of platform

This is why I say “The platform will not save you.” Your point of the platform, as a fiction writer, is not to be successful at the platform. Your point, for example, is not to have hundreds of other random Substackers follow you. Your point of Substack is to give readers everywhere, even outside of Substack, a place to find your writing. If you have five free subscribers and they each have 3+ stars of engagement with your one monthly post, then you are better off than the other person who has 100 subscribers who barely look at the two daily posts that person writes.

Have you heard the phrase “Follow the money?” Well, here’s my advice: “Follow your readers.” Find out where they are and go there. If you don’t know where your readers are, find a platform (like this one) that lets you publish little stories and get feedback and learn about the people who read your stuff on the platform. That will help you find readers elsewhere.

Gradually, your readers will buy your books. I know, because it happened to me, oh so gradually. I put my books out there, I make my writing available on Substack, I run an occasional ad, and people buy my stuff. I’ve sold books in Germany and they haven’t even been translated from English.

A parting thought: I once overheard an aikido master give one of his students the secret to advancement in martial arts. The student had been frustrated with his progress compared to the other students, who were faster, stronger, more graceful. The sensei scratched his scruffy white beard and said, with a conspiratorial smile, to the young man, “You know what the secret is?” The student shook his head. The sensei leaned in closer and said: “Here’s the secret: Stickin’ with it.”

Right now, other writers may seem faster, stronger, more graceful. And they probably are. But they’re not you, and they might not be around next year, or even next month.

You’ll be around, though.

Stick with it.

---