Why Your Writing Isn't Taking Off Online
A lesson I learned this morning while having coffee
“What am I doing wrong?”
“You are overcomplicating things.”
“How do I fix it?”
“Make things simple. Point everyone to one direction. And don’t be so cheap.”
This was the conversation I had this morning. It was blunt, straight to the point, and the bottom line was that I needed a simple plan and I needed to stick to it.
Does that sound familiar?
I was talking to another Christian writer the other day and he was sharing the same frustration. His writing hasn’t been taking off. He feels stuck. And no matter what he does to turn things around, they don’t work.
As I looked at his writing, it’s darn good writing. But, he was doing something similar to me. He was trying to do so many things. He was trying to cover so much ground. And he was overcomplicating his delivery and capture methods.
As writers, we get in our way sometimes.
When we are trying to get things to take off, we start to write on every platform imaginable. We try and capture emails seven ways from Sunday. And ultimately we confuse ourselves and our readers.
This confusion and overcomplicated nature becomes a problem. It keeps us from doing our best work and it keeps us from reaching our true readers. The people who really want to read our content and stay up to date.
What can we do?
In the conversation I had this morning, I realized that I needed to simplify the direction of my writing. Life is complicated enough, I need to slow things down, and focus on a few of the best things.
Then, I need to help that be true for my readers. Send everyone to one space. Gather emails in one space. And then share the crap out of my books and products in that space. Not obnoxiously so, but making sure people can find my stuff.
Here’s what I am doing for the rest of the year.
I have two books I am determined to get published by the end of the year. So, a lot of my work is going into my books. However, I will keep a steady flow of content coming out of Substack.
Everything will point to Substack. My blog content, Medium content, social media content. And email sign ups in my book will all point to Substack. Here on Substack, I will write updates on my books. I will also share things about my core topics: writing, family, and faith.
After that, I will leave the results up to God.
J.R. Heimbigner is a #1 Bestselling Christian Author on Amazon who writes about faith, family, and writing books. You can connect with him on Medium, his website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Substack!
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The Book of Proverbs
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One of the things I love most about Substack apart from the brilliant writing is that the Medium community is all transferring here. I would have hated to lose touch with any of you.
I love your strategy and hope it will be very successful for you.
I feel that’s my plan. I’m not a paying member of Medium, but still publish on there. Simily, I paid for a year, but I think the year is ending soon. I try to direct everyone to Substack. I guess I don’t understand it enough to promote it more.
Praying my audience finds me. I decided to focus on fiction. But “Miss” stories are highly autobiographical. Maybe, I should only focus on Substack.