First, Write For Yourself
If you can’t write for yourself, you probably can’t write for anyone else either.
Today I surfaced a quote by Scott Berkun. Scott’s on Substack, by the way. His tag is @berkun, and he’s well worth your follow.
He wrote this in a Note back in July:
‘If you can’t write for yourself, you probably can’t write for anyone else either.’
Scott Berkun
It’s clear enough, isn’t it? Write what you want to write. Everything else flows from this.
I’ll take this further. Everyone here can write, that’s the baseline. Yet not every author on Substack can write well. Unless you’ve had formal training in journalism or creative writing, chances are you need to put in big hours to get your writing skills from beginner, to acceptable, to master writer.
No criticism intended. We all follow the same path and it’s an easier path for some than for others.
Along that path you will see the advice, ‘write for your avatar.’ Your avatar is, of course, a potpourri of personalities that comprise your ideal reader. It’s a fictional profile that outlines their demographics, behaviours, motivations, pain points, and goals.
‘Successful businesses,’ you’re told, ‘use avatars to create products, services and marketing campaigns that resonate with your target market.’
The problem is, though, that your ideal reader is only ideal some of the time.
People are multidimensional. Your hotshot CEO works hard, yet Thursday nights he plays pickleball and every second Sunday he spends with the grandies. Your stay-at-home sourdough baker sings in a church choir and rides motocross every Tuesday morning.
Even you. You write on Substack and interact with others via comments and Notes. That’s your thing, your 5-9 job.
But it’s not 24/7. You are also an employee, a spouse, a parent, someone’s son or daughter, and you like pizza (but only once a week) You’re not an avatar. You’re a real person. Just like your ideal reader is a real person.
Look, avatars are fine. They are a great visualisation tool to keep your writing focused. But if you want your humanity to shine through, also write about human things. Let them know that a real live person, not some soulless and fact-based AI, assembled the words they’re reading.
Full disclaimer. I have three avatars I write to, and a niche that pretty much decides the lane I want my newsletter, The Banana Stand, to stay in.
Then, articles like this happen. They bubble up out of nowhere, and they have almost nothing to do with my niche or my target audience.
I don’t care. I write and publish anyway.
Even if my words are clumsy and there’s no revenue-generating ‘call to action’ embedded. Because I now have another 511 words out in the wild that didn’t exist a couple of hours ago.
Scott’s quote made me pause when I read it earlier today. Now I’ve been able to give it context and think it through to the point of being able to write about it coherently.
That’s a win, don’t you think?
P.S. No AI megajoules were consumed in the writing of this article.