
Nobody wants to read your shit (2009) - todsac
https://stevenpressfield.com/2009/10/writing-wednesdays-2-the-most-important-writing-lession-i-ever-learned/
======
cellularmitosis
I have come to loathe narrative-form journalism, and I think this is why.

Headline: Elon Musk will push people through tubes at 300mph.

Me: Whoa cool, what sort of tech is he going to use to pull that off?

Article body: I sit pensively outside of a rustic cafe with my laptop. The
early morning dew is still steaming off of the cobblestones.

Me: _close tab_

~~~
quacked
Narrative-form journalism is ruining the internet.

Me: "This chicken breast I cooked is too dry."

Google Search: how to cook chicken breast

Article Title: 3 Ways To Cook Your Chicken So It's Not So Dry - Inspired by
This New York Chef

Article Content: (4 paragraphs telling the story of how they author couldn't
cook chicken well, which culminates with an embedded YouTube video of a
10-minute long video produced by an entirely different cooking website with
even more extra content in it)

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Hmm. The internet created much of it.

Search engines don't like simple straight answers - the page, and site must
have "enough" text. Adsense pages have a minimum length, while writers have
stretched and stretched to make the weakest pages long enough, with synonyms,
ideally with intro, ad, distraction, filler, discussion of last week's recipe,
the pan set with affiliate link, and a load or two before you see the key
point and leave. If they can squeeze in another 40 words they're allowed
another ad block.

Trouble is, there seems little sign that the escalation out of control is
peaking... Even though adsense is not quite the blight it once was.

~~~
ThePadawan
> Search engines don't like simple straight answers

I would say they clearly do - but the people providing the answers don't.

Compare the recent move of Google to provide answers with 0 clicks to the
source ("How old is Paul Rudd?", "potato cooking time" both provide answers in
the topmost result box for me).

~~~
NeedMoreTea
That's google on their own site providing an example of do as I say not as I
do. :)

They've always discouraged and penalised sites that do that themselves. The
search guidelines always talked up what was needed on a page quantity wise,
and discouraged brevity. Adsense brought additional, and longer restrictions,
and then assorted SEO recommendations and some snake oil to talk around the
subject, include synonyms etc.

All that drove a certain style of writing content for the web that has
escalated into a very particular - and easily recognisable - style of waffle.
That's almost never what's needed for accuracy, readability or quick answers.
Long form journalism for the web is a bastard child of traditional long form
journalism and SEO inspired waffle, and probably the most annoying of the lot.

------
areoform
This is an overprescribed and oversold lesson that might be more harmful than
good. On the one hand, he is trying to teach people the importance of empathy
and perspective taking for any creative individual. But on the other, if you
believe that no one cares about X, then you are less likely to begin creating
X. You are also less likely to get emotionally involved in the first place
which might do more harm.

The opposite message might be a better one. There are always advocates for
your products, writing, etc. who want you to succeed. Your goal is to find
these advocates and work with them to create something that they love so much
that they tell others and help you to increase the number of advocates. If you
can build a little cult around your work and then expand it, then maybe there
will be people willing to read your shit after all.

~~~
lostctown
Like all lessons, it depends on the student. Personally, the author's way of
thinking has been immensely helpful. I grew up an optimist, not able to
understand why others couldn't see things the way that I did. After a few
failed product/content launches and a few years of grinding later my self-
bullshit meter is way more sensitive. This has led to me producing better
products, features, and generally more success in my work life. Like the
author, I assume no one wants to use my stuff at the outset, and this forces
me to fight to overcome this.

But again, it's probably more a function of who this advice is given to. I've
seen plenty of people get discouraged after making this realization. The key
is to be aware that no one cares and then do it anyways.

~~~
DonHopkins
As an optimist, you could realize that nobody wanting to read your stuff isn't
because you suck, it's just because everybody's too busy to give a shit, and
not about you personally. (It doesn't rule out you sucking, but nobody wanting
to read your stuff isn't a reason to get discouraged.)

~~~
danenania
Right, this is how I think about it. For the most part, when people ignore you
or are apathetic to what you’re doing, it’s not because they have any negative
feeings toward you or your creation, but because they are busy and self-
absorbed (like all of us), and are likely bombarded by ads and pitches from
all angles. Plus everyone is already using 20 saas tools and has 100 books on
their reading list and replies to 50 emails per day and so on. Our attention
is extremely over-saturated.

Being is this state creates a strong bias against even _considering_ adding
another new thing to the pile, so the bar is just very high to get a typical
person to care. That’s why it’s better to not seek out typical people in the
beginning, but early adopter types who actually _like_ trying all the new
things.

------
iamben
"Client’s Disease" is an interesting thing. I think 9 times out of 10 I work
with a client on their website or landing page there's either far, far too
much copy (and nobody really wants to read it all) or the copy is written with
the assumption that everyone already "gets" it.

It's always interesting asking them to take a step back, or to get someone
else that's never seen the product in the room and asking "look at this
website - what does this company do?" It's _really_ easy to assume that
everyone else understands your product just because you look at it every day
and it's clear to you.

~~~
Veen
As someone who writes copy for a living, I can tell you one reason that
happens. The client may insist on a word count or an agency links payment to
word count. If the client insists that a page must have 500 words of copy and
they’ll pay me X amount for those words, they’re going to get 500 words
whether or not that’s the right choice.

------
LandR
And even if they want to, they can't because it's down...

~~~
plibither8
It's probably the infamous HN hug of death

~~~
frenchie4111
Sweet, sweet irony

------
samat
Webarchive:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20190325160113/https://stevenpres...](http://web.archive.org/web/20190325160113/https://stevenpressfield.com/2009/10/writing-
wednesdays-2-the-most-important-writing-lession-i-ever-learned/)

------
DanielBMarkham
This is a good thing to remember for anybody who creates.

I would follow it up with something equally important: _You don 't have to
write for any freaking body else besides yourself -- and many times life
requires you do to exactly that._

When I started blogging, I did a lot of thrashing around. I still do. As a
freelance writer with a bit of a similar background to this guy's, I was quite
perplexed. Wasn't I sweating blood enough? Am I so scatter-brained? I used to
write copy that _sung_.

What the hell is going on?

What was going on was that my brain was working through some complex problems.
The only way it could do that was to dump it all out there, edit like hell,
then see what the fuck I was trying to say.

Sometimes I was wrong. That sucked. For a long time, on many subjects I
refused to take a stance one way or another. That also sucked -- for me.

Creatively writing, then editing your work like you hate everything you could
possibly say? It has a beauty and magic of clarifying thought that nothing
else I've seen in my life does. It's the most magical thing I've come across.

So yes. If you know what you want to say and you're just looking for a good
transaction, buckle the hell down and write like a copywriter. But be aware
that you're missing all of the good stuff. If you're only putting out what was
already in your head without the re-organization, cross-pollinization, and
sythesis part of intelligence, you're not being creative. You may sell a crap-
load of stuff, but all you're doing is re-organizing somebody else's ideas
into stuff people want to consume.

~~~
ChrisGammell
Editing in general is one of those things that I hope and wish and pray and
hope that I don't have to do...I mean, everyone else is able to get it right
the first time!

Nope, just our perception of the world. Everyone is editing. Especially the
stuff we really care about.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I don't believe in using algorithms to rate people online, but if I were
forced to do so, I would judge them by the number of comments they deleted
and/or edited. Oddly enough, this post was a bit of a drive-by for me. It's
not a good habit to get into.

Edit.

I used to have a mandatory three-edit rule. I am changing that to five -- at
least for essays.

The world needs more editing, my friend. Everybody's got an opinion, nobody
seems to be able to organize their thoughts.

------
vfinn
Just recently saw an ad on the web that I actually clicked. Was pretty
surprised, because it happens maybe once a year or so. The ad said: "New
restaurant in [hometown]" (big text) with simple yet captivating graphics. It
had a few additional points (smaller text) that I read after I got interested.
Worked really well. The noiselessness of it felt pretty refreshing.

~~~
stronglikedan
But how did you know you wanted to click it without a random picture, usually
containing an attractive person, that's completely unrelated to the topic of
the ad?

------
iwalton3
Cached Version:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://stevenpressfield.com/2009/10/writing-
wednesdays-2-the-most-important-writing-lession-i-ever-
learned/&strip=1&vwsrc=0)

------
nindalf
This author specialises in historical fiction. I remember reading a book of
his (Gates of Fire) maybe 15 years ago and in my opinion he sticks to his
prescribed advice well. That book had a great tempo, great characters, great
story. It respected my time as a reader.

The flip side is that it's not the kind of book that would win awards.

~~~
small_fish
_The Legend of Bagger Vance_ is probably his best known book (and the book is
a lot better than the movie).

_Gates of Fire_ is very good.

------
Double_Cast
The insight that communication is inherently transactional explains a lot
about advertising/media. Maybe others find it obvious. But it took me a long
time to figure out explicitly and work out the ramifications.

~~~
michelpp
A great book on this idea is "Human Behavior and the Principle of Least
Effort" by George Kingsley Zipf.

"The entire behavior of an individual is at all times motivated by the urge to
minimize effort" -Zipf

------
jdietrich
The great Drayton Bird would broadly disagree. People who care about your shit
_do_ want to read your shit; as a rule, they matter much more than people who
don't care about your shit.

As I'm typing this, Apple are an hour and forty minutes into their "special
event". Thousands of viewers from around the world are watching a movie-length
sales presentation. Apple will at some point promote the same products through
30-second commercials, but those long presentations play a vital role in
building the culture that surrounds Apple.

If you're selling dish soap, then sure, nobody really cares and nobody is
going to read your shit. If you're selling a video game or an industrial
machine or a piece of fine furniture, a substantial proportion of the people
who might actually buy your shit will enthusiastically read your shit.

That doesn't give you license to be sloppy or lazy or needlessly verbose, but
it does give you the freedom to use as many words as you need to communicate
the merits of your product.

------
timoth3y
I understand the author is trying to teach the importance of putting yourself
in the reader's mind, and he's packaging that message in a kind of tough love.

He's not wrong, but if you take his article at face value you'll miss
something very important.

Over the past few decades, I've had several hundred articles published in
print, blogged extensively, and run a reasonably popular podcast.

By far my most successful content has been when I have opened up and shared
honestly about my experiences and explained in detail how certain events and
decisions affected my life.

People are happy to read your shit if you are sharing something honest.
Honest, personal communication is so rare these days, people will actively
seek it out. What causes readers to tune out is authors who try to fake this
kind of sincerity, or who try to engage the reader emotionally while they
themselves hide behind the fiction of being an objective observer.

------
ergothus
> When you, the student writer, understand that nobody wants to read your
> shit, you develop empathy.

That's a bold claim. I'd argue part of the reason that no one likes
advertising is that the writers, by and large, don't have empathy with my
feelings, they are trying to force the issue.

Clickbait headlines, for example, attract me...and if the article behind it
does not fulfill the headline (which it so often does not), I'm ticked off. I
don't feel empathized with, I feel used, cheated, thwarted. I can easily
rattle off other, similar examples, but the end result is the same: Empathy
would be great, but empathy is not necessarily what the "student writer"
learns. And if your writing is trying to get around my feelings rather than
fulfilling them, you are left with an unhappy user.

~~~
mark-r
Then that's a failure of the clickbait author to apply the principle beyond
the headline. Certainly there's an epidemic of that, but it doesn't mean the
advice is unsound.

~~~
ergothus
I didn't comment on the advice, I commented on the conclusion the author made
that learning that people are uninterested in your material leads to empathy.

It'd be great if it did, but that's hardly a given.

~~~
mark-r
The author was extrapolating their own experience which did lead to empathy,
conjecturing that anybody else going through the same process will have the
same insight. I think the implication is that to be a success at advertising
the empathy is a necessary skill, and you will either pick it up or wash out.

Certainly there are other paths to writing that would not lead to the same
insight.

------
mattdemon
Here is a summary/review about it:
[https://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2016/06/nobody-wants-to-
re...](https://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2016/06/nobody-wants-to-read-your-
shit.html)

Here is a summary/review for his earlier book: War of Art.
[http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2016/04/book-review-war-
of-...](http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2016/04/book-review-war-of-art-by-
steven.html)

Finally, Draft No.4 was a really good read.
[http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2019/03/book-review-
draft-n...](http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2019/03/book-review-draft-
no-4-by-john-mcphee.html)

------
threatofrain
The author says that the right way to proceed is to provide the user value.
The problem is something the author implies earlier, that lying works. You
don't have to provide value to consumers to have a successful financial
relationship with them. You do need to transact some wholesome value if you
want to have a mutualistic relationship with people, but in the context this
essay operates, it's not required to be a marketing success.

You don't have to exercise empathy in any warm way. The marketer can
_successfully_ model people as data points that respond to stimuli. That's a
kind of empathy too, a kind of perspective work, it's just not what people
want when they say empathy.

------
orf
Ironic, because nobody can read his shit due to Wordpress crapping out.

Use a static site for static content!

~~~
gridlockd
> Use a static site for static content!

Far easier said than done.

Is there a "user-servicable" static site generator? I'm not aware of one, if
it exists.

Wordpress may be a pile of junk but as a CMS you can hand it off to almost
anyone and they'll be able to use it.

~~~
basch
Put Comet Cache and Cloudflare in front of it. Comet Cache generates generates
static files from wordpress, and Cloudflares "keep my site up if it goes down"
keeps copies of the static files.

~~~
gridlockd
The problem with that kind of solution is that a lot of stuff stops working.
For example, a static site generator can still support stuff like search
functionality by generating the required files, but a wordpress plugin is
going to be unaware that a static site is being generated.

~~~
basch
In my experience, Comet Cache is pretty smart about not breaking dynamic
plugins. And Cloudflare gives you a lot of power over what should and shouldnt
be cached through settings and explicit page rules.

------
Infernal
Since his site is down right now:

 _My first real job was in advertising. I worked as a copywriter for an agency
called Benton & Bowles in New York City. An artist or entrepreneur’s first job
inevitably bends the twig. It shapes who you’ll become. If your freshman
outing is in journalism, your brain gets tattooed (in a good way) with who-
what-where-when-why, fact-check-everything, never-bury-the-lead. If you start
out as a photographer’s assistant, you learn other stuff. If you plunge into
business on your own, the education is about self-discipline, self-motivation,
self-validation.

Advertising teaches its own lessons. For starters, everyone hates advertising.
Advertising lies. Advertising misleads. It’s evil, phony, it’s trying to sell
us crap we don’t need. I can’t argue with any of that, except to observe that
for a rookie wordsmith, such obstacles can be a supreme positive. Why? Because
you have to sweat blood to overcome them–and in that grueling process, you
learn your craft.

Here it is. Here’s the #1 lesson you learn working in advertising (and this
has stuck with me, to my advantage, my whole working life):

Nobody wants to read your shit.

Let me repeat that. Nobody–not even your dog or your mother–has the slightest
interest in your commercial for Rice Krispies or Delco batteries or
Preparation H. Nor does anybody care about your one-act play, your Facebook
page or your new sesame chicken joint at Canal and Tchopotoulis.

It isn’t that people are mean or cruel. They’re just busy.

Nobody wants to read your shit.

There’s a phenomenon in advertising called Client’s Disease. Every client is
in love with his own product. The mistake he makes is believing that, because
he loves it, everyone else will too.

They won’t. The market doesn’t know what you’re selling and doesn’t care. Your
potential customers are so busy dealing with the rest of their lives, they
haven’t got a spare second to give to your product/work of art/business, no
matter how worthy or how much you love it.

What’s your answer to that?

1) Reduce your message to its simplest, clearest, easiest-to-understand form.

2) Make it fun. Or sexy or interesting or informative.

3) Apply that to all forms of writing or art or commerce.

When you understand that nobody wants to read your shit, your mind becomes
powerfully concentrated. You begin to understand that writing/reading is,
above all, a transaction. The reader donates his time and attention, which are
supremely valuable commodities. In return, you the writer, must give him
something worthy of his gift to you.

When you, the student writer, understand that nobody wants to read your shit,
you develop empathy. You acquire that skill which is indispensable to all
artists and entrepreneurs: the ability to switch back and forth in your
imagination from your own point of view as writer/painter/seller to the point
of view of your imagined reader/gallery-goer/customer. You learn to ask
yourself with every sentence and every phrase: Is this interesting? Is this
fun or challenging or inventive? Am I giving the reader enough? Is she bored?
Is she following where I want to lead her?

When I began to write novels, this mindset proved indispensable. It steered me
away from Client’s Disease. It warned me not to fall in love with my own shit
just because it was my own shit. Don’t be lazy, Steve. Don’t assume. Look at
every word through the eye of the busy, impatient, skeptical (but also
generous and curious) reader. Give him something worthy of the time and
attention he’s giving you.

The awareness that nobody wants to read/hear/see/buy what we’re
writing/singing/filming/selling is the Plymouth Rock upon which all successful
artists and entrepreneurs base their public communications. They know that,
before all else, they must overcome this natural resistance in their audience.
They must find a way to cut through the clutter. As a fledgling cub at B&B, I
remember days, weeks, months when our various creative teams did nothing but
beat our brains out trying to find some way to make the dull exciting and the
unlovely beautiful–and to make the beautiful-but-overlooked gorgeous too.

How, you ask? You’ll know you’re on the right track when beads of blood begin
to pop out on your forehead._

------
YeGoblynQueenne
This is great advice for technical writing, including ads, sitcom script
pitches and scientific papers, all of which are addressed to humans with a
very limited attention span.

In literary writing however, the opposite is true: the person picking up a
novel, or even a short story, _wants_ to read your shit. That's why people
read literature (as opposed to ads or technical manuals). Because they enjoy
reading. And the more of it there is to enjoy, the more the enjoyment lasts.
Like a good meal, good literature makes you want to eat more, More, MORE. And
then have a nice glass of wine and a cigar as you sit in front of your
fireplace on your bearskin rug. Ish.

I mean, have you ever heard anyone say "I'll just pour myself a nice Chianti
and relax with a nice paper on variational autoencoders", or some such? Nah.
People read technical writing because they have to, because they need the
knowledge locked inside. Not because they _like_ it!

This is why technical papers are written so as to minimise the amount of
attention one has to invest in the task of reading them. For instance- a good
technical paper keeps summarising itself. The title is a one-line summary of
the work done. The abstract is a slightly longer summary. The introduction is
a still slightly longer summary, with a short outline of what you are about to
read anyway at the end. The related work section is a short summary of
previous work in the field. The framework section summarises your intuitions
of several years' work, admittedly hiding any excitement you might have felt
about figuring out something new behind a barrage of impenetrable shibboleths
of your field. The implementation section is a short summary of about ten
thousand (wo)man hours of hair pulling. The experiments section is centered on
a visual summary of what was achieved (plots). And the conclusion section
summarises the paper you just read, just in case you missed the point.

It's an awful, ugly, horrible way to write that sucks all the joy out of
writing and reading. It's really a kind of straightjacket. And, to be
perfectly honest, far from the article author's assertion that it somehow
helps "hone your skill", I find that it only achieves what a straightjacket
achieves: restrain you while you go mad.

------
ValentinJesse
I read most of the articles from the bottom up nowadays. Most of the writers
don’t get straight to the point because they click bait too much and they know
that they have to fill up their articles with as much bullshit as possible in
order to compensate for the lack of relevant content. If the article is long
enough you might fall for the trap of wanting to save it for later rather than
dismiss it completely.

The sole mission is to bait you into that cost-per-click and cost-per-
thousand-impressions profit generator, that’s it.

------
rumcajz
> You acquire that skill which is indispensable to all artists and
> entrepreneurs: the ability to switch back and forth in your imagination from
> your own point of view as writer/painter/seller to the point of view of your
> imagined reader/gallery-goer/customer.

That's pretty similar to the API design, where you have to switch rapidly from
the point of view of implementer to the point of view of user and back again.

------
leethargo
From the title, I hoped that this was somebody from academia ranting about the
high volume of low quality that their (early stage) colleagues are publishing.

------
darekkay
(2009) is missing in the title

------
YeGoblynQueenne
Some advice about pitching TV scripts and designing Magic: the Gathering cards
by Mark Rosewater, who's done both, for a living:

[https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-
magic/r...](https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-
magic/roseanne-any-other-name-part-1-2011-03-14)

------
dgarceran
It depends on who you are and where you are. If you are in a small community
where you know everybody and you write/release something related to that
community, then probably you have a good amount of "clients" or readers there.
That's my experience and it worked good so far, and I never did anything
simple, short, fun or sexy.

------
andosteinmetz
Hold up. This guy's advice on making art is: "Reduce your message to its
simplest, clearest, easiest-to-understand form"?

I guess this is a road map to making great art such as uhhh [checks notes]
_The Legend of Bagger Vance_ and _Above the Law_.

~~~
andosteinmetz
Snark aside, I really believe this is terrible advice for an artist. I'd argue
that most worthwhile art does not have a message, and if it does, the work is
not a "reduction of that message into the simplest clearest, easiest to
understand form."

What enduring work of art fits this description? I think that most great
artworks are great because they are complex; because their "message" is
something elusive that unfolds over time with deeper engagement.

This entire tough-love-self-help attitude of "nobody wants to read your shit"
also seems completely counterproductive. I much prefer the advice making your
work to satisfy yourself, emotionally and intellectually without worrying too
much about who wants it, and to find a community where you're interested in
what they're doing - so they will probably be interested in what you're doing
at least in the general outlines - which can serve a place to test and develop
your ideas and craft.

------
revskill
Here's my lesson on advertising: Everybody wants your stuffs because they
think "another everybody" wants your stuffs.

------
CalChris
> When you understand that nobody wants to read your shit, your mind becomes
> powerfully concentrated.

This reminds me of a scene from _The Inner Circle_ [1] where Tom Hulce's
character has just told Stalin that the Russian projectors were just cheap
copies of the Germans'. The bureaucrat who is responsible is standing right
there and realizes that he is now literally begging for his life.

If beforehand he would have been officiously polite to this mere underling he
now becomes powerfully concentrated. His every word is chiseled with a
singular intent, to convince the projectionist to moderate his view ever so
slightly, just enough to spare him his life if not his dignity.

[1]
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103838/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103838/)

More to the point, I think this writing advice is appropriate (very
appropriate) for proposals and cold calls, where you do not have an ongoing
relationship with your reader. In that case you are literally begging for your
relevance. But in normal communications, clarity and simplicity is the rule.
Orwell's advice comes to mind: _insincerity is the enemy of clear language_.

------
mrhappyunhappy
This is definitely not true or long form sales pages wouldn’t exist, nor
engineers would bother reading details to make sure the product will work for
them. It al depends on the audience. My guess is the person who wrote it
wanted attention.

