I Know Exactly Why These Two Articles Went Viral

Hint: it’s not a mystery

My most-read stories on this platform have nothing to do with productivity, writing, how-to, or Medium, but they do have something in common. They’re a break from the norm and highly personal, containing words with strong connotations that I believe compel people to read.

I don’t write much about writing, Medium, and productivity because I don’t want to, and plenty of talented writers on this platform regularly fill that need.

I fill a different need.

I write true stories about my life, and I’m a 50-year-old divorced Black woman raised solely by a white family, mother to a college student daughter who had a baby recently, moved three and a half hours from the only place I’ve ever known to a town where I know nobody, suffer from diagnosed depression and anxiety exacerbated by my isolation in said new town and recently cut my narcissistic mother from my life. Oh, and I’ve had enough sex and drugs in my lifetime to reboot Less Than Zero single-handedly.

I’ve been through some shit, y’all. We all have, but I’m okay writing every little detail about it, and guess what?

Those stories get read.

I think I’ll leave the productivity articles to the experts.

Full disclosure: I go by a pseudonym on Medium because I have a good full-time job that pays my bills, some of my daughter’s bills, and helps support her baby.

I use a pseudonym so that I can write openly and honestly without fear of judgment or repercussion.

Given the above, it’s no surprise that my two most-read stories to date involve race and sex, titillation, and controversy. I published one in my own publication and one in Sexography, and both were curated.

Readers are still finding them weeks and even months later.

I didn’t expect this story to be so popular.

As the title states, I wrote about my then-husband’s white mistress cutting our daughter’s hair without my consent. He’d been cheating with this woman for months, eventually moved in with her, and introduced her to our daughter.

I was pissed off, hurt, and reeling at the time, and I decided to write about it now, years later. Even with nuance and backstory left on the editing room floor, the story resonated. Greatly.

I have a couple of theories about why it attracted the number of readers it did.

• Anytime you see a headline using “white” and/or “Black” as they pertain to race, the line in the sand has been drawn, and there are sides. There always has been, and this story tells the reader to expect it right in the headline. Controversy and race in one story make for an interesting tale.
• I used a recognizable but not too familiar word in the title — what Zulie Rane referred to as a “spicy” word in her video on writing good titles. I wasn’t looking for a particularly flavorful word when I wrote the headline, but the woman was a mistress. I googled it to be sure of the definition, and yup, that’s what she was.

If I’m in the shoes of my readers, I’ll click on that story too.

The above is another story about my life that delivered value and promised to be provocative, and who doesn’t want to read about sex? Especially a true story about an act that’s often considered taboo.

I went out on a limb with this story, unsure whether I wanted to write it or not because it’s just so personal.

But did you think a threesome could be intimate? Neither did I until I had one, and neither did a lot of readers.

This is why this story continues to be so widely read, in my opinion:

• This is not Pornhub. This is a personal story that happens to feature sex. It’s not erotica, an entirely different genre, but a story about an event in my life. This was a first-person tale of sex with two men, and it was meaningful and subtle in its telling. The story also uses a “spicy” word in the title, but that’s what the story is about, a threesome. I mean, it was published in Sexography — there should be no surprises there. But again, a recognizable but not too familiar word that entices the reader to click. They want to know how a threesome could be intimate. “Intimacy” and “threesome” in the same headline are sharply contrasted, and that alone will make me want to read.
• The story delivered real value, and that’s my goal with every story I write. It let readers know they’re not immoral for thinking about a threesome, for fantasizing about having one. It conveyed that a threesome can be something beautiful with communication and consent, the very opposite of shameful.

Readers want a break from the ordinary and ubiquitous. Write about the controversial and argumentative topics or the scandalous and sexy topics.

But tell a story and provide value.

I write about issues and events in my life that happen to be controversial and tantalizing and readers told me with their engagement that I hit the nail on the head.

Be as personal as you’re comfortable being when you write because it’s likely that someone looking for something to read has been in the same boat or is facing the same situation.

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