Ignore This Popular Writing Advice

Add value instead

I’m a brand new writer on medium. If you’re like me, you stumbled onto medium and thought, “Wow, a community for people like me?! Sign me up!”

A lot of us are here for more than fun. Many of us are trying to make it as a writer.

That means we aren’t just scouring Medium for articles in our interest areas — mine are mental health, self-improvement, mindfulness, and eating disorders — but we are looking for sound, concrete advice on how to write better.

Writing is really hard, which makes the Medium library all the more enticing.

But there’s a lot of advice out there. And not all of it adds value. Here’s what my research found.

Why you shouldn’t write to your audience

The most popular advice I read was to write to your audience.

Articles recommended writing about hot-button, popular topics. They advised using Google’s autofill feature to determine trending topics or searching the Amazon bestseller’s list to see what people are reading about.

They advised against writing about what interests you.

What?

I get part of it. Knowing your audience is crucial so your writing doesn’t end up in the black hole of the internet with no one to read it.

But not writing what you want or what you’re good at? And writing what’s popular?

Here’s why that writing advice misses the mark.

Readers can sense bullshit

Your readers are intelligent, curious, unique human beings. They know when something is authentic, and they know when something is bullshit.

If you’re writing for your audience only, you’re pulling from the shallow end of the pool. In writing only what’s popular, you lose nuance and substance. And your readers will know it.

It’s not value-added.

If I’m reading something, I want to be moved. I want to hear something vulnerable that represents someone’s truth. I don’t want a clickbait title with canned advice because a topic is popular

Try instead

Ask yourself these questions.

What inspires you? What are you passionate about? What are you knowledgeable about? How can you use your unique strengths and write a piece that prioritizes quality over likes and shares?

Writing about what inspires you not only makes the work more bearable, and dare I say fun, but it also helps you built a shared human connection with your readers. It is this connection that makes writing unique over other forms of art. Without that, you might as well be writing to a blank computer screen.

Reading what we want to hear doesn’t help us grow

Did you ever have a friend who only told you what you wanted to hear? Translation: They told you what they thought you wanted to hear.

That friend agreed with all your opinions. They liked everything you wore. But they never challenged you. They never encouraged you to think about something from a different angle. They didn’t help you grow. And it turns out, friends like that are pretty dull. And so is writing about what you think people want to hear.

Try instead

Don’t tell readers what they want to hear. Tell them what they need to hear.

When Brené Brown started her writing career and wrote about shame and vulnerability, do you think she was writing what her audience wanted to hear?

Hell no.

Few knew what shame was before Brené Brown. And absolutely nobody wanted to talk about it.

Brené Brown didn’t just honor herself by writing about her passion, but she anticipated what her readers needed. She took something people didn’t like talking about, and she packaged it in a palatable way. By doing that, she helped them grow into what they needed.

And as a result, we now have people who are more connected, more vulnerable, and more shame resilient.

If Brené Brown decided to only write to her audience, she wouldn’t have helped so many people struggling with shame and vulnerability.

Disclaimer: No affiliate links here, I’m just a fan!

Anticipate topics that help your readers grow. Stretch the limits of human capacity. Build something that wasn’t there before. Bring important writing out into the light, instead of keeping it in the dark.

Don’t lose your authentic voice

If you’re writing only to an audience, you could miss yourself.

Writing is an extension of yourself. And it takes courage to produce words that were only in your soul.

Isn’t that why you wanted to write in the first place? To inspire? To contribute something special?

That’s why I love reading great writing — and that’s why I wanted to write. Because I read pieces that were fearless. And those pieces were articles that only the author could have written because of their lived experience and unique perspective.

Writing what’s popular is safe. What’s scary is writing authentically. But the result offers something much more valuable.

Try instead

Be brave.

Leverage your unique strengths and passions. Ask yourself, what is unique about me that I can bring to my writing? How can I pursue what I like and challenge myself to become better?

Bring yourself to your writing. Otherwise, it’s hollow.