If You Get Upset Because Other Writers Don’t Read Your Work, You’re Playing the Wrong Game.

Translation: I was playing the wrong game…

I facepalmed harder than Jean-Luc Picard.

The once quiet voice in my head was now screaming,

You’re supposed to be writing for readers! It doesn’t matter if writers don’t read your work.

And here I was after spending several months trying to get the attention of other writers. I’ve read this advice before but chose to ignore it. There are mistakes you need to make.

Only, this wasn’t a mistake. I wanted their attention and I regret nothing.

Becoming part of the community

Writing can be lonely.

Connecting with other writers makes it infinitely more interesting. They understand what you’re going through and they’re usually the ones who leave the best comments and feedback. There’s a lot to learn from each other. And so, genuine relationships develop and you naturally become readers of each other’s work.

It’s a beautiful thing.

I strongly believe in the idea of reciprocity and building a community of friends who share similar interests. I spend a lot of time reading what others write. I get inspired by them. But I’ll admit, there is a part of me that hopes they will read my work in return.

Often, they do and I am seriously grateful.

The joy that turned into a burden

In the last 7–8 months, I’ve published over 100 articles. As someone who didn’t write much before, this was a big milestone for me. On top of trying to write and publish frequently, I also tried to read everything. Add that to everything else going on in your life and the joy of reading your fellow writers becomes a burden — it’s overwhelming.

It became particularly tough when I struggled to finish my own work. I used reading as a form of procrastination. That was definitely a mistake.

An epiphany — avoiding the sucker’s game

This may seem obvious to many of you but I realized that,

If you have to read someone else’s work for them to read yours, your writing isn’t good enough. At least not good enough for them to stick around.

The reverse is also true.

I know it’s a bit of an unwritten rule for writers to essentially trade views in an effort to support each other. So it can be quite upsetting when it seems like you’re on the sucker end of the bargain. I’m sure we’re frequently on both sides of this and I apologize if you feel I did you dirty.

But that’s the wrong game to play. There are other ways we can support each other. We’re not here to trade views — at least we shouldn’t be. We’re not in the business of trading attention because that would suggest we intend to interact with someone once, hoping they come back twice (or more).

That’s not a game I want to play. I’m not here to out-trade people’s attention. I’m here to earn it. I want to improve my writing and write more engaging pieces.

So read whoever you find interesting and don’t expect anything in return. Writers should write and readers should read. Socially coercing one into becoming the other doesn’t make anyone happy.

If you want to be a prolific writer, your output should be greater than your input. Busy writers spend their time writing and promoting their work. They don’t have time to read everything.

I follow a little more than 250 wonderful writers (some are now inactive). In fact, there are amazing writers I haven’t read in months! It’s not because I don’t want to, or because the algorithm doesn’t show me their posts (although partially this). It’s because I don’t have the time to read 500+ posts a week. I’m not sure who does. If the average read time is 3 mins per article, that works out at 25 hours of reading a week.

That’s insane!

Some days I don’t even have the time to write.

The truth is you can’t scale one-to-one relationships

You can’t have 1000 best friends.

You can belong to the writing community and have mutual respect for your fellow writers. But you may not like everything they publish. That goes both ways.

I confess. I don’t like true crime pieces even if I follow some excellent true-crime writers (it creeps me out). I read their off-topic articles instead. You should skip pieces you don’t want to read.

It’s a privilege if anyone reads even one of your pieces. This is particularly true if you publish daily. When someone only reads one of your pieces a week or even a month, they are still a fan.

We need to embrace lighter-touch relationships. At least, I do. The kind of relationship where you drop-in once in a while for writers you like. And if you want to, you can hard-commit to the select few you love.

This isn’t like Instagram where you can genuinely consume content in a matter of seconds. It doesn’t scale the same way.

So, when other writers choose to stop reading my work or stop following me altogether. I don’t take it personally (anymore). After all, if you’re a writer that feels obligated to read everything others have written, you are in the business of reading, not writing.

Don’t forget the 1% Rule

According to the 1% rule, about 1% of Internet users are responsible for creating content, while 99% are merely consumers of that content. — Wikipedia

The precise percentages will differ depending on the platform but the principle remains. There are always way more consumers than creators.

However, given that the population of writers is so large, if you wrote only for them, you could still do extremely well. I’m sure we can think of a few who do exactly that.

It’s easy to make the assumption that most members are writers. This is especially true when they’re usually the ones who leave comments. But don’t dismiss your silent readers, the ones who love your work and read everything you write without telling you. They may not publicly like, share, or comment on any of your posts. But they will be the first to read your next piece. They are readers who read, not writers who read or readers who write, just pure readers. Many of them don’t want to engage, they’re just after an interesting read.

So what am I doing now?

I’m focusing even more on my writing.

I’m not chasing the attention of other writers anymore — at least not in the same way. There are other ways of supporting each other. It’s like interacting with colleagues that work on different projects, every so often you meet at the virtual water cooler (Twitter, Discord), engage in some fun chitchat, exchange a few ideas, then get back to work.

I will continue to read intermittently during the week. But I’ve decided to do the bulk of my reading on Sundays. This way, I can catch up on the people I follow and read their most interesting stories of the week — not all of them.

Going forward, I need to serve readers the only way I can, by writing better articles and responding to their kind comments.

So how about you? Have you ever found yourself playing the wrong game?

Want to have a chat around the virtual water cooler? Connect with me on Twitter.

If you appreciate a little irony, here are some of my pieces on writing. Yes, I still want your attention.

Many thanks to Ryan DeJonghe for encouraging me to write this piece.