Popular writing sucks

Successful writing is painful.

Actually, any writing that is intended to be read by others is painful.

The obsession with making your writing useful, meaningful, entertaining, inherently valuable to someone else is draining.

One of the most common pieces of writing advice is about consistency. Showing up regularly and putting your mind towards producing something. However, no one really talks about the hard part (or maybe they do, and I’m indulging myself in complaining about it anyway) — showing up consistently and creating something actually valuable.

Any primate can show up and create keystrokes every day. The hard part about consistency isn’t the dedication. It’s the pressure of writing something actually worth a damn.

Fine, let’s say you need advice about writing something valuable. The next piece of advice you’re going to get is, invariably, going to be about “finding your niche”. Find your little piece of the universe and pee all over it. You need to find your jurisdiction before you start running for mayor.

But that, also, is exceedingly difficult for a normal person. Sure, there are some people who have been obsessed with crypto or international oil distribution or paper mache cats since birth, and they have no soul-searching left to do. However, I would argue that the vast majority of people do not have a specific burning passion that drives their literary journey.