My Writing Wasn’t Being Read Until I Understood This.

And yes, you can use it too, to bring more people to your pieces.

I always loved to write,

I don’t remember exactly when I started using the supreme art as my best friend to confess and unload my demons, but I always loved writing.

Although nowadays, when I read my old texts or articles, I wanna burn and delete them because I feel ashamed of how bad my writing was.

But even sucking at it, I always loved.

Most of the time, I’ve written for dumping all the shit that goes inside my mind trying to organize it,

most of the time, it never worked, my mind still chaotic.

I mean…

I still have at least 10 notebooks stored in my wardrobe which are all old writings and the most of them I’ll probably just throw away eventually.

Well, from time to time I do look on what’s inside just to analyze what’s in there, and when I see it, I always go:

“Damm! How the f do you want to become a successful writer with this level of technique?”

I swear someday I’ll use for something,

at least to make a fire out of them.

But nowadays, I realize that there is a big difference in between writing because you wanna unload your mind and see what’s going on inside of it, and writing stuff people will actually read.

When you don’t have the habit of writing, and you’re just a reader,

even if you do read a shit ton of books,

You don’t realize the amount or effort put into them.

Most of the time, you just get a book already published, and in the beginning, most of the ones you read are actually bestsellers or very famous ones,

so naturally they have to be good ones, don’t they?

Even if they are not the kind of book you enjoy reading, they are well-made books, have been edited, polished and had work on it,

otherwise they wouldn’t be published, or become bestsellers, right Specially with the old mortar and brick publishers who are very picky.

When you just read,

when you just have the reader point of view.

You can’t understand the amount of work put in there.

The editors and publicists, how people had to deal with the bad drafts and mistakes to get there, plus all the other stuff related to the book itself.

Even worse, you can’t even imagine how many times the author probably wrote and re-wrote all the pages and paragraphs,

how much time he spent learning, researching, imagining, writing, getting mad at what was written because it was sh*t,

then throw it all away and start again, let it rest for the mind to clear and then reading the final draft just to realize the direction the text took was completely the opposite of the way he wanted because he deviated too much,

and now he wants to start all over again.

Naaa, you really have no freaking idea of that, You’re just a person who’s reading.

You are not that critic if you find any error in the book, the grammar mistakes for you are just a print error.

Plus at the begining, you also probably do not even read that well, so the punctuation, commas, tempo, voice and rhythm, you get any of that sh*t.

And if we are going to be honest here, very few people actually know how to read well.

Remember those classes where each student had to read a part of a text in the book? How many of them actually knew how to?

It still the same, the kids are just grown-ups now.

And I am not even entering on how many know how to write well.

Me per example I had the idea on my mind of:

“this paragraph looks too big, better put a comma here, so my teacher knows I use them”

Almost the same idea behind of picking “C” after 5 “B” s in a row on a multiple choice test.

I mean, 6 “b” s in a row? There is just no way the answers are right.

How many times you find something on your social networks, books or even here on medium that are completely garbage and you can’t keep reading.

Maybe because the subject makes no sense to you, and the author writes it in a way that makes it look 10x more complicated,

maybe there are so many grammar errors, and you lose interest in it, (if I am reading an erotic tale per examle, and there are grammar mistakes, there is just nooooo way I am getting hard, sorry).

For me, specially, is the spacing and punctuation.

If the moment I open an article, the body of the test does not look sexy,

I am out.

If it has chunky paragraphs, commas in places which break the rhythm and the tone sounds ultra heavy in the first 3 lines,

I am instantly out.

I don’t give a damm if the message comes straight from the gods,

if the messenger can’t pass it the right way,

God is wrong.

I believe all of this happens, because when you start writing,

at the beginning to yourself, and later on when you finally get the courage to hit publish for the 1st time to send it to the world,

your mind start to shift.

When you open the text you just published for the first time, and go straight from writer to reader of your own art, You change.

You become a critic, you become the worst piece of editor you can find around, the Terence Fletcher of written pieces.

The grammar Nazi inside of you becomes a monster, You don’t compare yourself to your past self,

you compare with your favorite writer.

And you slowly start to realize and accept what a piece of crap you wrote.

Because c’mon, even if you are very good at writing, your first pieces sucked, don’t lie to yourself.

I don’t know a single writer who says “my past first piece was amazing”,

all of them think the first piece, book, or article they published, were one of, if not the worst.

They wanted to remove it, get back, re-edit, hide and cry under the blanket with that piece, polish it so good, until they reach perfection.

But as the old saying goes: Done, is better than perfect.

Because very soon when you start publishing stuff and try to keep a posting schedule, you realize you could, edit, and edit, and re-edit again, and again, and again, spending your entire existence doing it,

and honestly, it will never be perfect.

After all this struggle, and realize your “art” will never be perfect, then it reaches a moment you just give up on making it perfect,

and your mind changes again,

your mind goes from: I want to have a perfect piece,

to: I want to have the best piece.

That one is one of the biggest and best changes it can happen in the mind of a writer, because now, it’s where he starts to think of your writing as a craft,

And as any craft in the world, if you practice a lot of it, you’re going to get good eventually.

(or at least less bad).

The writing goes from a text in front of you, to a music you are composing.

You understand that just like music, it needs to have a foundation, a base, some main lines, some punches to make your reader’s mind shatter,

a direction you want to go and finish at some moment because time is not eternal,

you get the commas are not thrown away on the text to split the big chunky parts, but they work more like a sound break.

The dots, become your allies to make it easier to read.

Those big chunky paragraphs that unless the reader makes a break by himself he will be lost in thought or have asphyxiated by the end of it, will no longer exist.

Because now it became a music, and you learned how to sing, you learned how to play around,

You can be the drums, the bass, the guitar and even the lead voice.

Not only that, but you also learn, how to change that voice, to play the “writing game”.

And you can in a split-second and be the sweet grandma who’s “hello! My little sweet baby darling, grandma missed you soooo much, and I’m soo glad you’ve come to spend some little time here with granny during this infinite scrolling on the internet, that I’ve made something for you, love, it’s in the kitchen, let’s go there and get something in the jar”

or maybe the

“yooo hommie! Sup b*tch, c’mon, c’mon my man, pass over here after work in ma place, to check this one out, I’ve just met my dude back there, and he made me a special price for this purple kali here, and ma man, thes sh*t is dope, I been glued to the couch for 3 hours can’t even move ma aye balls”

Or even the

“Hello ladies and gentlemen, for the final part of this text, I would like to speak very briefly and just give you some example on how the way you change words and use the punctuation correctly can change the voice you are using, and I know you are all anxious to get liking and scrolling until next episode, but we need to go through all our numbers, so if I could have just a few more minutes of your attention, we can all be back very soon to practice our writing”

And you can transform.

You can blend and become anyone or anything.

That my friends, for me, is the superpower of a writer.

A writer can literally be anything he wants.

Because every single thing in this world is based on writing, from the atemporal knowledge we can get from dead people, to learning history, hearing stories, business, movies, making plans, codes or any other thing,

is just an outcome of a written piece.

That’s why writing for me is the best form of art, and the one I dedicate to.

C´mon! To trigger emotions and to make someone feel from mere symbols on a screen or piece of paper?

That is some next level thing.

But if even after you learned all of this, and realized you just need to practice and practice, and polish your craft to the level where it can sound like anything you want,

And you see how much your technique improved, also now you have the confidence to hit publish without giving a damm, and you are even better at doing it,

You still get no people reading your stuff?

Well, there is still one very important part you’re lacking then.

Because on top of all the technical knowledge, background, idea, or whatever.

The most important thing for any writer, aspiring writer, or person who wants to be read.

Is Story-telling.

It will work sh*t if you have the most amazing story ever, but you don’t know how to tell it.

People start reading for a lot of reasons,

but they don’t keep reading because they like texts, because they like you, or because they understand how amazingly the piece is written, how good your techniques are, or how many efforts you put on it, also they don’t care if you think your writing is comparable to big masters, no one does.

The only reason someone keeps reading, is because of how good you are at storytelling.

And only after you start to tell stories in a good way, from the hook on the title, to the body of the text, to the CTA in the end, you will get readers,

Until there, you’re just hitting publish.

A good story, is like cocaine, people keep coming back to it, just like you crave for the next season of that series.

So if you want to learn more about techniques, how to make people come to you, and take your pieces to the next level, hit the follow button, and start learning story telling, all the rest will come from it.

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Thank you folks, have a nice day and keep telling stories!

-DGaspar.

*Poof * disappear in magic smoke.