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Writing | Culture

Writers Complain About Everything. Here’s Why They Shouldn’t.

How to have a more productive mindset with your writing career.

Sean Kernan

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Ketut Subiyanto via Pexels images

I sometimes consult with new writing platforms to help them understand creators and platform culture.

One thing I warn them of — is that writers can come off as profoundly negative at times. They will argue with you and come up with all sorts of theories about the state of things, and why their content isn’t performing well — or how the platform is broken.

Some complaints are surely valid — but there are a ton of misconceptions at work. And it hurts us writers too.

The thing about being judged

Writers often forget that judgment is a necessary component of engagement.

We want readers to like/clap/upvote our content. We want them to share it. But that cannot happen without people forming an opinion of our content.

Learning to detach from that judgment, while also valuing it (when it's useful) can be such a potent source of growth.

I’ll give you an example: someone shared my Medium article on Reddit two years ago. I saw that it was getting upvoted and had a good number of clicks (which is…

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Sean Kernan
Sean Kernan

Written by Sean Kernan

All my articles are 100% human. No AI involved. Also, I'm a nommer. Submit to my publication Corporate Underbelly and I'll try to help you get boosted.

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