8 Current Writing Trends That Make Me Want to Claw My Eyes Out
Every time you do these, baby Jesus cries
“Be vulnerable”
Oh dear God am I tired of hearing this shit. Seriously, I’ve been hearing it for years now, so when I see an article pop up with this advice in the title, I want to reach out to the author with a “hey you unoriginal fuckface, 2015 called, it wants its trend back.” Aside from the fact that it’s unoriginal, it’s just not good advice. You know who might benefit from being more vulnerable? Someone like Mark Zuckerberg, or Jocko Wilink. You know, the kind of person who appears bulletproof all the damn time.
Your average writer? Not so much. A lack of vulnerability has never been an issue on this platform. Like, ever. If you want a great example of why this advice sucks, go and read some of James Altucher’s stuff. Jesus Christ, talk about oversharing.
“I did <insert activity>, here’s what I learned”
I blame Gary Vaynerchuck (even though I like him) and his advice of “document to build an audience” for this one. Here’s the thing, I don’t give a shit what you learned from working at a startup for a month. I don’t give a shit what you learned from spectating at a powerlifting competition (this was an actual article I saw once!), and I sure as shit don’t care what you learned at some conference.
None of this is remotely interesting.
You want to document something? Go and work on something for years, so you can offer some actual insight that is worthwhile. Anything else is just surface level bullshit.
“4 Lessons we can learn from Jeff Bezos”
You don’t know him, you don’t run your own startup and you haven’t even been in the business world for a substantial period of time. Do you think anything you’re putting out there is something the rest of us haven’t already figured out? This is right up there with people putting out their lessons learned after watching The Last Dance. As though they have some unique insight having never played professional sports.
The worst though was a recent one I saw that was something along the lines of “life lessons from Navy SEALs.” Uhh, there’s one huge problem here…
You’re not a fucking Navy SEAL!
You’ve never even served in the military, so you have no place to be giving life advice based on what they do. I’ll listen to Jocko Wilink if I want that kind of life advice. You know, someone who actually knows what they’re talking about.
“Anyone can be a writer”
Talk about cheapening our pursuit. Would you say anyone can be an astronaut? Anyone can play in the NBA? Writing well is hard, and gaining an audience means you either have a high level of expertise in a subject and the ability to be interesting, or that you’re very good at telling a story. Both of those are skills that take a long time to acquire and perfect. It’s a craft just like any pursuit.
I’m sure if we had the stats on how many people have left this platform, it would become apparent immediately that writing isn’t for everyone.
In addition to telling you that “you can do it too”, these articles always espouse some framework that anyone can use to be successful at writing. Judging by the sheer volume of formulaic shit I see on my feed, people believe this. Guess what? No one wants to read something that’s written to a formula because it’s always hackneyed, unoriginal shit that doesn’t flow. The writers that are actually worth reading don’t need a formula.
“I made $1,000 on Medium, here’s how to do it”
You know what these people are? They’re the ballers of Medium. It’s utterly distasteful because not only are they humble bragging (which is even more irritating than straight bragging) by flashing their cash, but they’re using it to try and gain more readers. They’re the Dan Lok’s of this platform, promising riches to unsuspecting newbies when the reality is they have no clue how it happened for them.
Any title that mentions “tips and tricks”
As the awesome Alex Boast wrote, fuck your tips and tricks. There are plenty of writers here who actually care about this as a pursuit, so when some newbie comes in with a piece like “tips and tricks to get curated” in an attempt to get eyeballs, it’s insulting. Here’s a tip: learn to fucking write well (and that doesn’t include giving bullshit advice) and stop trying to take shortcuts. If you can show you’re a good writer, you’ll get curated and/or published.
Wait until that happens, rather than trying to game the system and get your name up in lights early. When your writing is deserving of it, the curation and reads will come. If you game the system before you’re ready, you’ll have a lot of eyes on your work wondering how the hell this shit got put out there by an editor.
“I wrote for x days in a row, here’s how it changed my life”
Look, the first few times this was done it was interesting. Now, it’s jumped the shark. People far better at writing than you have already done it, people that are terrible writers just around for a quick buck have done it. You’re not adding anything new to this dead horse that has already been whipped a thousand times.
Articles containing secrets of the best writers
This popped up in my feed last week, and was even in a publication. It was fucking nauseating. Instead of writing something original, you’ve taken pieces of advice from a bunch of other articles, tagged the author in it and presented it as some kind of bible for newbies. Repackaged shit is enough to annoy me when I see it, but what really made me want to vomit in my mouth was that this was just a cynical attempt at easy page views and attention from those authors.
It’s not good marketing, it’s scammy and gross. If you want page views, earn it, don’t scam your way to it.
Telling people what they “must” do as a writer…when you haven’t even been writing for a year yourself
Either you’re arrogant as fuck or you’re just totally deluded to think you know what you’re talking about in any field after such a short period of time. Talk to the people at the top in any pursuit and they’ll usually say things like “this has worked for me” or “the longer I’m doing this the more I’m unsure of anything” when they get asked for advice.
And here you are telling us what we “must” do to become a successful writer. Borrow a clue junior, you have no idea what you’re talking about.
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