Newsflash: We are not Entitled to Readers

Yeah, I don't like that either

Photo Credit — Remington Write

I get it. I do it, too. Blame everything around me for the ongoing fact that I can reliably count on eight to fifteen people (out of thousands of “followers” on another platform) to read anything I write online. Ok, thirty on a good day.

Here are my go-to theories about why I’m “failing” at this online writing dance:

• The algorithm

• That my insightful, intelligent, thought-provoking writing loses out to listicles and lame retreads of dumb advice

• People are stupid

• That the editors bury my work because, well just because

• Planetary alignment

• It’s Monday

Or Wednesday or whatever.

What I don’t want to admit is that no matter how hard I work on a piece, no matter how good it reads to me, no matter how many places I promote it, I am not entitled to having loads of readers show up with garlands of peonies and thunderous applause.

That sucks.

I’m a real if-then kinda writer. If I do this and do it really well then I can sit back and watch the stats skyrocket. Yeah. No. That’s not how this dance works and the sooner I resign myself to that unwelcome fact the sooner I can just, well, dance. And really that’s what I want to do. I want to dance and if I’m dancing by myself, well them’s the breaks, Princess.

Having made my shaky and unreliable peace with this truth I would now like to point the finger at you (the fun part).

Stop whining about how the algorithm has screwed you and stolen your readership. If you’re going to quit this platform because it’s ripping you off, there’s the door, Sunshine. It’s not locked. That other platform that pays so much better? Yeah, like I said, the door isn’t locked. Be on your way.

We’re all doing our best here (theoretically anyway). Big deal.

That doesn’t guarantee anything. If the readers aren’t flocking to our work it’s on us. Our choice. We can jump on the marketing bandwagon, learn SEO, tailor our writing to the tastes of this or that audience, and keep writing. Oh, and we’d better not be expecting miracles. Barometric pressure might be against us so there’s that. We’re dealing with that most fickle of forces: readers’ attention. Plus we’re up against the largest tsunami of attention-grabbing competition in the universe.

Face it. We can do everything “right” and still get crickets.

So where’s the “choice” in that, wisenheimer? I’m glad you asked that, pinhead in the last row.

Our choice is to keep at it and not worry about going viral (is that really still a thing after 2020? go figure). Count every reader as a precious gift. That person has about ten kajillion things they could be doing instead of reading our work. And the reader who followed you like a puppy today is under no compunction to continue. Readers’ attention is as ephemeral as the weather. Roll with it.

So if you’re gearing up to blast out a rant about how lame this or that platform is and how uninformed and lazy readers are and what a joke social media is (none of which I disagree with, btw), pause for a moment.

It’s not the job of any social media empire or all the readers online at this moment to coddle our egos with massive stats. It is our job to improve our writing all the time. Those writers who are racking up the Big Numbers are clearly striking some kind of nerve. Good for them. Even they, however, must know these numbers are not a given.

Nothing is in this dance.

So let’s check our actions. Are we inconsistent? Do we vomit quickly tossed-together pieces, get discouraged, walk away for a week or a month, then come back to pour our hearts and souls into a piece and gnash our teeth when it’s ignored?

Let’s also take a quick look at our proofreading practices. Maybe you’re different but all it takes is two typos and one poorly constructed sentence to have me out the door.

Oh, and quick aside to the newbies here: using the same old Pixabay/Unsplash pix that ten thousand other writers have used is also a major turnoff. Educate yourselves. Check out Wikimedia Commons or Flickr. Or go out and take your owned damned photos! (see above)

And then let’s take a good long look at our motives. Am I in this for the money? If so, yeah, I can hear the laughter already. Am I in this for the attention and ego-stroking? Ditto. Am I in this because I have a lifetime of stories, thoughts, ideas, and wickedly sharp proposals that I need to share? Here’s what might work: if I can share them with integrity, authenticity (ack, I really hate that word), and energy I might get the attention of readers.

And if I don’t?

Well, here’s what I won’t do. I won’t rant about how I been done wrong. I won’t grind my teeth and point hate at those who are getting high readership on this and other platforms. However, I also probably won’t try to emulate what they’re doing because that’s them.

This is me.

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