I’ve thought about this pair of questions all my life, and I think if you take either of them really seriously they lead to the same place: intimate understandings. The question is “why is this interesting?” or “why is this important?” or even literally “who cares? (and why?)”
It's always "how do I get people to read my stuff" never "how do I become the kind of writer someone wants to read"
— Alice Lemée 🌱 (@alicellemee) September 30, 2024
you can turn it on yourself, too. what were the last 50 things you read? why did you read them? what persuaded or compelled you to read them? talk to other readers too, about what they’ve read and why they’ve read it. what compelled them?
a clarifying question is: what would compel you to prioritize something new in your to-read list, from a unknown stranger, over everything you’ve already been meaning to read?
for me, and I think for a lot of people, a general answer is something like, “this person demonstrates a particularly nuanced understanding of something I deeply care about that I haven’t seen anybody else quite express in the same way”
there’s something very interesting here that I rarely see anybody talk about, which is that a third party other than the author can actually make a text better in the eyes of a reader this one tweet for example makes Sex and the City more compelling to basically anyone
Watching in your mid 30s is even better. It took me about five seconds clock that the specific issue is that he’s deeply sexually attracted to her, but socially embarrassed by her.
— Kayla Ancrum ✨on Deadline✨ (@KaylaAncrum) August 14, 2024
Also, separately, that he’s been blacklisted from eligible women of his class. https://t.co/Fm62sUN0Db
me: why should I watch die hard this blog:
I was compelled to watch Die Hard because of this 2010 blogpost Nakatomi Space, which describes it as “one of the best architectural films of the last 25 years” https://t.co/ukrD8e2jGU pic.twitter.com/DTaeSHKW01
— Visakan Veerasamy (@visakanv) December 1, 2018
part of how scenes work is that you have a cluster of people making each others work more compelling simply by perceiving and discussing it with each other. so one answer to “how do I become a better writer” AND “how do I get people to read my stuff” is to participate in scenes
also going back to that SATC tweet- if someone told me “hey the author of that tweet wrote a lengthy essay” I would definitely read it. If they wrote a novel, I would be open to reading it though in my case maybe not in a hurry
oh I just went to check and they *are* an author. of course, hahaha. I’m adding their stuff to my list but I have a lot of other stuff on my plate that takes higher priority. Rn I’m in that Goldratt’s Goal / Grove’s High Output Management headspace, so id jump at that equivalent
anyway to wrap this up I’d probably say, if nothing else, ask yourself why do you care about what you care about. really persist with it. might be more natural to ask your friends + have them ask you. great excuse for a dinner party or a pizza meetup amongst creative friends btw