How to be the best at writing and win at life?
No, really, I’m asking.
I’ve been on Medium for one entire month, folks! And boy howdy, the things I’ve learned. First of all, I am not as great of a writer as I thought I was, despite what my biggest fan (Mom) tells me. I have a lot to learn. Like how to write more concisely, and avoid really long and complicated, run-on sentences because they are annoying to read, and why would you want to put your reader through that sort of anguish anyways?
Also, stop using stupid words like anguish. Just say pain, Lindsay, why is that so difficult for you?
I’ve learned that there is more than one way to skin a cat.
I wish this was a literal article I read, alas, no one has written anything about cat skinning, that I’ve seen. I suspect this is frowned upon subject matter. To be clear, I don’t actually want to see a cat skinned (I’m not a psycho) I would just be interested on how somebody might craft a story on such a topic.
I mean that there are a plethora of ways to get ahead in the writing community. These ideas include:
1) Choose a niche that you can write expertly in.
2) Distinguish who your audience is.
3) Publish many articles in significant publications.
4) Write about sex. A lot.
5) Write about Medium. A lot. Which is why I’m writing this post now.
6) Get Curated.
7) DO NOT, under any circumstance, write stream of consciousness journal entries. Nobody wants to read that.
8) Read all the stories about writing on Medium. I’m trying!
9) Be better.
Turns out, I am not adept in any of these areas.
Niche’s scare the hell out of me, because nobody puts Baby in the corner, man! I can’t nail down any topic because I want to be free in my abilities to write about all of the things.
I am not a blogger. I’ve tried over and over again to write informative articles on gardening and dogs and other things like parenting, but none of it comes naturally.
They (the real experts) say to include little stories about yourself to add a personal touch, which suits me fine. Except my “little touch of a story” ends up being a long drawn out yarn about that one time I opened the door to greet a vacuum salesman with my tit hanging out. I wrote this story in an article I was crafting about nonfiction books you should read when searching for motivation. It was an awkward post, all around. No one picked it up for publication, so I deleted it and tried to forget the abomination ever happened.
I’m just not cut out for this hustle.
I will stick to satire writing, I tell myself.
I am marginally good at making people laugh, and as so many motivational stories tell me these days, the more I do it, the better I will get.
But then, as I was looking for jobs on the blogging boards the other day (I know, I know, I just said that I suck at blogging — girls gotta eat) they all want writing samples! For the love of…
If I am anything, it’s resourceful, so I ended up sending this entrepreneurial start-up blog my story on making my first 13 cents on Medium thinking they would find my hilarious satire charming and would hire me on the spot. They’d probably create a position just for me, writing funny blog posts to attract all of the hipsters to their website.
Never heard back from them.
I keep thinking that I should have never turned down that ghostwriting job I was offered a few months ago.
Sure it paid less than a cent per word, the work was insanely demanding, and I wasn’t able to use the business’s name on my resume, but at least I could have said I was working. Sort of.
I look at the top writers on Medium and marvel at their prose. They are killing it with their straightforward listicles and how-to stories. They can flawlessly weave a small personal antidote into their writing with not even a hint of an inappropriate boob joke. Their narrative essays are succinct and have a moral to them. Mine are about ruthlessly killing worms when I was a small child. I’m not as gruesome as you might think. I felt remorse for the worms, okay!
I just want to be the best at writing and win at life. Is that really too much to ask?
Don’t mind me, guys; these are just the daily thoughts of a person trying to get ahead in life.
A stream of consciousness if you will.
