My Secret Sauce
From Rock Bottom Depression To Insane Success
How I wrote myself out of a recession
I woke up last week feeling inspired. I had a vision. I made myself coffee and set out to go viral. No more small poems for a dollar a pop, oh no. I was going to write something big. I vowed to myself I would make $40,000 for this next piece.
BIG.
I would have just the right title, subtitle, image, and have a recipe so deep fried with high-cholesterol-hope and saturated-fat-dreams, that even the most disciplined skeptic would be a baited catch — hook, line, and sinker.
I knew money would have to be in my title with plenty of images of money. Money sells. Money smells…good. Money gets clicks and claps. Money gets the blood rising, the hope ballooning, the inner Don Quixote dreaming.
I knew my plot would have to be ascending or escalating, something on its way to success with the sound of trumpets blaring in the background.
Not no anti-hero’s descent into the everyday hell of 2022, a year of pandemics, wars, and rising inequality. God no. Do you think I’d be stupid enough to tell the truth?
I would have to lie, and lie BIG. Except I don’t like to use the word ‘lie.’ Makes me sound like a criminal or a liar.
Instead let’s just say I’m floating a dream we all want to believe. I’m wishing upon a star with my little ten-step listicle, my stairway to Heaven. There’s a difference between me wishing the best for you and blowing smoke up your ass. Trust me…
Without further ado, let me reveal my visionary piece I launched last week: my viral 10 steps to global, ultra-successful, rolling-in-the-money, voluptuous virality.
- Make your story about money.
Pretty simple and self-explanatory, this law. If you don’t understand this, go back to Pavlov’s School of Red Meat.
2. Pronounce yourself the authority, golden key-holder, magician, revealer, Grand Inquisitor, CEO, Head Chef of this tasty, riveting little recipe that promises success.
3. Be dogmatic, authoritative, adamant, like a tight-rope walker on a high rise giving instructions to a novice. Insist to your readers they must do as you say down to every last painful detail. Speak threateningly. Impress upon your readers the risk involved in such an enterprise of elite winners. This will make your readers think you are actually serious.
4. Inflate your promises. Exaggerate. There is no tale too tall. No dream too laughable. In fact, the more depressed the world is, the greater their penchant for dreaming. Remember, Cervantes, the author of that grand dreamer, Don Quixote, spent much of his life in poverty, obscurity, and prison.
5. Organize your secret steps into a nice round number like Ten. Put one number on top of the other, slowly leading the reader into an orgiastic crescendo. Trust me on this one. It works every time. Readers like the general direction of up. Readers like stairwells. Readers like Heaven.
6. To protect yourself from any readers who wake up to find your formulas for success do not work, make your sixth step nearly impossible to attain. For example, tell your readers they must write ten hours a day for ten years straight before the small chance of the miracle of going viral might accidentally fall into their lap, like some stray, lucky, accidental power ball number on the right day at the right time.
7. In a complete about-face, use reverse psychology on your readers. Try to talk them out of following your ten steps. You can insist your steep path to success is not for the faint-hearted. This will whet their appetite even more, like wolves around a piece of raw red meat.
8. Use mystical words throughout. Words like “secret” and “key” are like catnip to the disillusioned reader, hijacking the amygdala of even the most grumpy and cynical of cats.
9. Now this next step might sound counter-intuitive. You must now grandstand to your reader and rub your success in their noses like a god. I know, I know, it sounds harsh. But it works! Just say something like, I, too, was once a miserable beggar without a prayer or leg to stand on, before I resolved to pull myself up by my homeless bootstraps and shoot for the stars. Someday, you might be able to, too. Fat chance, but not impossible.
10. I don’t know. Say anything. By this time, you have your readers hooked. You can say something like, the world is made for dreamers. Or, growing up, Mom used to tell me that elephants couldn’t fly, but I never believed her. Or, Pops used to tell me money doesn’t grow on trees but then I found a one hundred dollar bill in a Mulberry tree. Like I said, anything.
That’s it. That was my big, big listicle, my stairwell to success, my vortex to virality, that is already well on its way to going viral any day now. I will let you know when I have collected my $40,000 for this one story, whether it happens or not.
© Carlo Zeno 2022
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Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed this episode in going viral. If you liked this tall, fantastic tale and would like to support, please consider buying me a coffee and/or reading two more pieces below. Thank you. 🙏
