Nobody Gives a Shit About Your Writing

Sean Kernan and I agree completely on this. This is what I do about it.

In the world of competing priorities, and in a world of utter self-absorption beautifully and regularly demonstrated on Medium, there is no greater truth. Nobody gives a shit about your material. But hang with me a sec, there’s more to this.

I’ve been around about three decades longer than Sean. I’ve also had a long career in professional speaking, written two prize-winning books, and unlike Sean I have been in the military. His dad was a SEAL. A lot of what he writes resonates with me for a variety of reasons, and I honor that by reading his stuff all the way through.

Here is his piece. Worth attending:

In this article that I saw this morning, he points out the battle that speakers who have done this professionally for years have been facing since, well, forever. People get bored. Today far more than ever, with phones as the biggest insult to a highly-paid and well-prepared speaker.

Worse, since our attention spans have dissipated like the excess farts sold by perhaps the most foul moron on TikTok, butt (pun intentional) for those who actually BOUGHT them:

None of us is particularly original. The sale of farts might have been, butt (again) for all the wrong reasons.

Too many folks simply wash and rinse old material, plagiarize, or like one idiot this morning, publish utterly wrong nutritional advice such as saying candy and sweets for kids are just fine.

Really? See this, Sparky.

Tell that to a family who can’t afford full dentures for a kid who rotted his brand-new-for-life teeth out with sodas and sugary treats.

I am not sure who performed the lobotomy on that particular writer but it seems to be pretty widespread. As in the space between his ears, a landscape of nothing, as it were. Lotta that on Medium Tedium these days.

But I digress.

Those of us with speaking careers have watched audiences fiddle, fidget, zone out and do the dead fish look since the beginning of orations. It’s human nature to zone out when bored, which actually is pretty damned good every once in a while. Get bored, that is.

Sean writes:

Most people are on a desperate quest to avoid being bored.

Think I’m crazy? Think he’s crazy? Let’s talk.

Kindly. I am now taking Hump Days every week. This time I drove to Florence. Stood on the beach at Heceta and did nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Stared at the incoming waves. Watched seagulls land and remembered how it felt to perfectly land a parachute or an airplane. Waved at people with dogs. Got bored and STAYED bored for hours.

It was fucking magnificent. It’s how we are WIRED. We are supposed to be bored every so often.

Then I wandered to town for lunch and read in this book by Michael Easter why boredom is bloody well extremely good for us.

Here is his book:

Which I enthusiastically recommend, including to my buddy Sean. Sean’s only my “buddy” because every so often he responds to a comment and we can make each other laugh. I don’t know him. I do like his writing, though, and so do a lot of other people. So when people zone out in his classes, it serves him to know why, so Sean, get the damned book. It’s an eye-opener.

That in fact goes for all of us who are competing for reader eyeballs, as well as those of us whose attention spans have been reduced to a gnat fart in a hurricane. My hand is up here, I’ve had to work hard on this to regain my ability to focus (and yes, finish articles, much less a book, which has been a problem lately).

More tellingly, though, someone who loves me enough to get in my face sent me Stephen Pressfield’s gem Nobody Wants to Read Your Shit. That book came out in 2016; it might or might not have preceded Sean’s comment, but the point is that this is universal.

And it has been since the first Neanderthal did a TedX about how to bring down the woolly mammoth. Some wag fell asleep in the back row, and got carried off by an adolescent T-Rex who did, in fact, have all his teeth.

People do not give a shit about your shit. Not really. Most want to be entertained, to Sean’s point, which is why many of the articles that lean into deep outrage will outperform my material any day of the week. I am not “entertaining” except when I am in funny mode.

Most of the time my material gets into Dear Reader’s face about taking personal responsibility. BORING.

But not for my regular readers.

Since the advent of media of any kind, we have sucked up entertainment and gotten more and more and MORE demanding and entitled. We want more extremity, more of everything in that endless sucking need to assuage our boredom. We want more horrible crime stories. More gory accident coverage. More extreme porn. More violent protests. It’s the American Way.

We’re entitled, right? We deserve to be entertained.

That’s us. The nastier the messier the bloodier the better.

For my part I have muted all the crime pubs. I have muted all the writers and pubs who have leaned into this kind of extremity because it feeds the worst parts of all of us. But that’s just me.

I like being bored. However, I learned to like boredom through extreme adventure travel. How on earth? This is what Easter did, but I’ve been at it a bit longer, albeit I didn’t spend a month in Alaska.

Easy. Because while there are moments of intensity (leaping off a bridge, skydiving, riding a wild horse, blah blah) those are brief moments. Hours of travel. Hours of sitting around waiting if your guide is late or doesn’t show up or the car breaks down. Hours of sitting on a remote Madagascar beach because it’s too damned hot to do anything else. Hours and HOURS of boredom.

Boredom has made me a much, much better writer, person, friend, observer. Because our brains are wired for it.

Boredom is completely necessary to the human condition, brain health and a great deal more. Again, read Easter’s book. It’s an eye-opener all right. And because my lifestyle of adventure travel takes me to some pretty damned remote places, I can’t use my phone or much of anything. That gives me a chance to sit my aging ass on a tussock somewhere and do nothing but listen. I have more creativity, productivity, ideas and writing material than most.

You might wanna try it sometime.

Sean’s argument that he can’t get through most folks’ stuff is indicative of the simple fact, and I’ve been there too, that the gods of Silicone Valley have tapped into precisely the right fish hooks to slip into our cheeks, keep us glued to our phones. Easter writes about this, too, but you gotta have a strong stomach.

Because he’s addressing you and me.

Easter’s book is full of this kind of wisdom which, again, if you have the stomach for it, slaps you right in the face about the choices you and I are making. If you can’t read through a whole article, that’s feedback.

Sean goes into some how-tos, which I agree with completely. Most particularly this:

Tweak things. Do more research. Make it tight. (author bolded)

Two many pseudo-nutrition articles I’ve been reading lately on Medium are full of lousy science. Full of opinions, devoid of solid research and embarrassingly behind in just about every recent discovery around sugar, cholesterol, fats and the like. It’s like these people are on a different planet. So much of it is offering advice that they heard in from their parents in the 1950s.

That insults Dear Reader. And we wonder why smart people don’t read our shit. It’s like giving a new Netflix movie a chance and realizing ten minutes in that it’s just another poorly-conceived, badly-acted and insultingly low-brow film to which Bruce Willis lent his fading name.

Too many of Medium’s articles are just like that.

Easter writes:

Traditionally, when we became bored we would go inward and mind wander. Mind-wandering is a rest state that restores and rebuilds the resources needed to work better and more efficiently any time we’re focused on the outside word (from writing to coding, to having a conversation). It also allows us to introspect and develop creative ideas to improve our lives. Time in unfocused mode — rediscovering boredom — is critical to get shit done, tap into creativity, process complicated information, and more. (author bolded)

He also writes The average American today spends more than eleven hours engaged with digital media.

Some even more. Not me, man. Silicon Valley may not own my life.

Lately, I find myself eschewing the TV, Netflix, my phone, everything. I settle in my living room and just sit. Sit. I let the silence settle. The fireplace crackles, and time takes its sweet time. I don’t need to “pass it” the way our idiot ladyfriend passes gas, above.

Time respects no one. However how you and I choose to spend it makes all the difference.

If you don’t read people’s shit, even good shit, it might be time to check out and be bored for a while. I can attest. I learned to be beautifully bored the first time up Kilimanjaro. And every single magnificent trip into the wild since.

I’m loquacious. Voluble. Garrulous. Verbose. It’s in my nature. It’s a fault, I know. Tell me about it. I cannot change how I’m wired, and I have tried. I have a lot to say.

However, sometimes I have a lot to say because I’ve been places and done things most folks will never, ever, ever do.

I’ve also done a shitton of reading, a shitton of Deep Work, and spend a lot of my life living out loud and not glued to my devices.

That gives me a shitton more to write about than regurgitating old advice from dead people, calling it your own, and insulting Dear Reader with your opinions presented as fact.

That habit, unfortunately, has jaded Dear Reader, including this one, for good reason.

I agree with Sean that I could edit down my stuff. However I do the research. I do not present my opinions as fact. I offer links and references. Those kind Dear Readers who stick with me also stick it TO me if I am off, if my facts are askew. And I listen, change and thank them.

If you want readership, learn to write. Learn to be bored, dump the devices, and let your brain wander and repair itself. Learn to be quiet, wander within, and then take yourself wandering so that you — and you know if this applies to you- stop stealing other people’s shit and write about your own for a change. If that’s you, and you know who you are, just stop already. You’re not a writer. You need a job.

And get Stephen Pressfield’s books on writing. He will get in your face. Clearly a great many of us need just that, which most assuredly includes me. Which is why I have all his books on writing. An entire library on how to write by folks a good sight better than I am. However,

I do the work. You might consider doing the work, too, which kindly, includes learning how to be bored.

That might even allow you to read through a single Medium article to the very end. But that may be wishful thinking.