500-WORD RANT #2
I May Never be Successful Here, but You Can Learn From My Mistakes.
Lessons in beating my head against the wall.
I’m an idea guy who writes, not a writer who gets ideas, and that just about sums up everything wrong with my approach to Medium.
As a professional idea guy, my function is to learn everything I can about a client, get their input and goal, write a creative brief, agree on the creative direction, and finally solve the problem.
This has been both a blessing and a curse.
In the world of advertising, the challenge is to sell an idea. Once you do that, the whole process is easy because you have the company’s marketing and sales force behind you.
During my career, I have worn many hats: production artists, designer, digital illustrator, and art director. Those activities helped me improve my creative skills in terms of solving graphic problems.
Also, I have worked as a copywriter and creative director. Those activities helped me improve my creative skills in terms of solving verbal problems.
The results have been some of the most enjoyable and rewarding moments in my career, such as the times I have written, produced, and edited radio and TV commercials.
But all those years of professional experience have taught me to work from an initial prompt.
I love to solve problems, so my writing is reactive:
- Sports: analyze why a team is good or bad with the hopes of being able to predict future results.
- Humor: satire in reaction to the absurd things on Medium.
- Writing: solve the puzzle that is Medium.
- Fiction: even the tiny amount of articles I’ve written have come through a collaborative short story, a writing prompt, or fan fiction.
And none of that writing sells on Medium.
For the vast majority of people, writing is the exact opposite of advertising.
If your plan starts with an idea, you write a story you love and then hope somebody reads it.
If your plan includes an idea and target market, you write a story you love about topics that attract the most fans.
The most popular non-tech topics are personal stories of discrimination, confessionals of past trauma, sex, and how to succeed.
I don’t do personal exposures of my tortured past, sexual activities, or sell you snake oil, as I have lived a privileged life, want to stay married, and can afford to be ethical.
But the worst thing is the habits I have as an idea guy haven’t prepared me to deal with the other 50% of the job.
“Writing is nothing; marketing is everything”
From a Forbes article on writing Mike Michalowicz, author of Profit First advises:
“Before you even get to the process of writing a book, you MUST commit to spending as much, if not more, time marketing your book once it’s published.”
I hate doing sales. No wonder I’m frustrated.
