Maybe You Don’t Write What People Want to Read
I’m not sure you can.
At least, I’m not sure you can if you’re trying to please everybody.
You can study trends. You can watch what gets shared. You can pay attention to titles, keywords, algorithms, and whatever else we’re supposed to care about this week.
But I think people read because something makes them feel something.
They recognize themselves in a sentence.
They laugh because they’ve thought the exact same thing but never said it out loud.
They stop because a few words remind them of someone they miss.
Or maybe they simply realize, Oh. It’s not just me.
That’s the kind of writing I want to do.
I’ve written things I thought were pretty good that barely got noticed. And I’ve written things without thinking much about them at all that somehow connected with people.
I’m beginning to think the difference isn’t always how well something is written.
Sometimes it’s how honestly it’s written.
People don’t necessarily need another expert telling them how to live their lives. There are plenty of those already.
Sometimes they just want another human being willing to sit beside them for a minute and say:
Yeah. Me too.
So how do you write what people actually want to read?
Maybe you don’t.
Maybe you write what’s true.
And trust that somewhere out there, somebody needed to read it.
