Writers hate marketing

I need to be careful. Sometimes a brilliant idea turns into an “it seemed like a brilliant idea at the time” kind of mistake. But I think this time I have a brilliant idea.

Last night I heard some writers discussing a contradiction in the writer’s life. Writers want to write, not spend hours marketing and managing social media. But if they don’t market, no one reads their writing. Depending on life circumstances, it can be hard to fit both writing and marketing into the energy budget.

So what if I could merge writing and social media?

I want to start using Notes on Substack, but 90% of what I see there are writers telling other writers how to succeed on Substack and make bank. Is this a reflection of my subscription list? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ At any rate, I want to post useful or at least entertaining notes. So the trick I’m considering is to use Notes to post first lines inspired by compelling visuals.

• A Post: First I post an exercise about using visual prompts to generate strong first lines.
• A Page: Then I create a page where I describe this concept in more detail, linking to the exercise and listing images that link to the Notes I’ll create.
• Many Notes: Then I start posting Notes with compelling images and the first lines they sparked, asking others to post their own first lines.

So the individual Notes link to a page which links to the exercise along with all other notes. Readers can then comment on each image individually, but also this might lead them trying the exercise and becoming more familiar with my newsletter. But even if no one engages, I’ve at least sparked story ideas and practiced writing compelling first lines.