I’ve tried to figure out both what people want to read and how to write what people want to read, specifically on sites like medium, where if you become a member and read folks’ shit, they get paid. Addendum: I have been trying to figure out how to write what people want to read within the realm of what I want, like, or feel I should write. I’ve tried to do this not because I am tired of writing in a way folks prooobably (?) don’t want to read, but mostly as a sort of experiment, I guess. An experiment in monetizing that which I love and want to do, tbh.
I began by writing topically, in late 2020, about Covid 19. True to form I incorporated my interests, radical politics and fantastic literature. I even thought about the kinds of titles people give essays and articles, the kind of articles that seem to attract readership, and gave my essays those kinds of titles. Admittedly I think the way I give titles to pretty much anything I write is pretty non-informative, which is not only the point but the way I like to do it (often with a pseudo-explanatory subtitle like “On the ontology of lavandula & the charisma of certain religious figures,” which probably doesn’t help in the least) but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t help one gain readership.
The thing is, though: I think I’m always interested—and thus tend to write about—topical things. My third Medium essay was on a (literal) perennial favorite of mine, the figure of Krampus, which I published around xmastime. I even threw in a reading of the Bojack Horseman Christmas special from a few years earlier, on gaslighting and abuse and the carceral nature of christmas yadda yadda yadda and it was probably too academic-y, but it might actually be my favorite from the past year. I also gave this one a very click-baity title: Why We Need Krampus Now More Than Ever, which is the sort of title I personally skip over, but what can you do?
After that I wrote what until very recently had been my most read essay, the first installment of what will soon be an actual paper ‘zine, a memoir covering the last decade living here in the bay. I was actually struck that it garnered so many readers. I still think it’s because people think it’s saucy? Or maybe just because it has to do with relationships? It’s an account of a date I’d gone on back in 2018, and I think perhaps that because it was with a man, and I never had a big coming out, and many of my readers are family or people I at least marginally know (see: facebook), people were interested in that queer little tidbit? I honestly don’t know. Thinking about analytics and readership is a sort of de facto paranoid activity.
After that I returned to zombies, but also literary criticism and even physics, because those are all my breads and my butters, but that was the one where the amount of work I put into it - the number of readers I had were the most out of balance. Again, probs too academic-y, and yes I know I probs need an editor but I don’t really care that much at this point.
Then my mother died, and I didn’t have time to write for awhile, then I didn’t think I’d be writing about her death, let alone publishing it, for awhile, then I sat down to write something that I thought was about Dungeons & Dragons but actually turned out to be about her death. I like this one, maybe because it surprised me, or maybe because its self-psychologizing is more lucid than I’m usually able to pull off. But again: the title Dungeons & Dragons & Death does not tell my readers enough—namely that it’s more about the death of someone incredibly close to me than it is about D&D—but again again: I really liked that title.
This is where things got weird and I truly started thinking about readership and practicable ways of making that more of a reality for me: I decided to google the top terms and topics searched and read about on medium, then incorporate them into my next very short post (I tried for one minute, thinking that helps readership, but it registered as two minutes I think because of the gratuitous picture). The terms included startups, life lessons, politics, travel, design, and cryptocurrency, and I threw pornography into the mix just to see what would happen. Hashtagstravaganza! Only I didn’t really actually write about any of that shit, but instead used the terms and the aging listicle form as a framework for an absurd poem about taking care of yourself and destroying the given world etc. etc.
The next post, which actually might be my favorite of all of them, is another very short and borderline absurdist two paragraphs on the history of this very moment and the death throes of meaning. I’m actually reprinting this in the inaugural edition of The Peregrin Eloquent that my patrons will be receiving in the mail shortly and that you can have for a measly 25 cents if you’re interested! See pic/ more details to follow.
Which brings us to my latest post, a second installment of my memoir ‘zine project, which I wrote after looking at a calendar and realizing that it had been one decade to the day that I had told my now ex-wife that I had had an affair and after which my life—all our lives—changed completely. Which probably explains why that post very quickly became the top visited and top read post of the year, but which I’m still surprised about. People like the gos, I guess. Maybe that’s it. Anyway I’m very proud of this piece, because I realized in writing it that I had been completely unable to write it for an entire decade because I had not done the work to get to a place where I could come to really embody the lessons I needed to learn from it. Interestingly, writing it was actually a very non-emotional endeavour: I have been dealing with the fallout of my own bullshit for ten years, and actively attempting to address them for a good portion of that, so in a way it was low-key like writing a report. It was pushing publish that gave me pause—is this appropriate? Will there be backlash? WILL ANYONE READ IT. Well, apparently they are, and I’m not going to lie: that feels pretty good.
Anyway, to those of you who’ve made it this far, thanks so much for reading what I’ve written, wherever I’ve written it and whatever I’ve written about. It means a lot to me—the way I appreciate it is a way I carry around with me all day every day, a way that animates me the way my desire to write and the act of writing itself does.