How to Write on Substack When You're Not "a Writer"
Picture “a writer.” Whatever image just came to mind. Stay with it. Close your eyes for a moment and make it more vivid.
Notice if you have a particular response to it, something along the lines of That’s me or That’s not me. Even if you’re a professional, award-winning, bestselling author, you may respond either way (me, not me), depending on the day and your mood.
What defines “a writer” is often unrealistic, inaccurate, and melodramatic. Writers are thought to be endlessly imaginative to the point of living in a state of constant (inane) creativity. Writers supposedly “love language.” (I don’t even know what that means.) Karen Bender writes in Lit Hub that writers “want to grab the world and wrestle it to the page.” (Really? I’m a writer down to my toes and my tax forms, and I’ve never felt this. Ever.)
In “How to Stop Thinking and Start Writing,”
writes,“I think there can sometimes be a false perception about what it takes to write and how people feel about their own writing. But once you talk to enough authors you learn that — with the exception of a lucky few — most find the writing process challenging. Those that excel at it have simply learned the tools to manage the hardest bits i.e. just sitting down and starting to write.”
People who don’t think of themselves as writers misjudge the fact that writing is just a job like any other. It has its challenges and isn’t typically an inspiration, feel-good party. As the Columbian novelist and journalist Gabriel García Marquez told The Paris Review, it’s “nothing but carpentry. Both are very hard work.”
Like most jobs, writing can be a hobby. Writing is to being “a writer” as cooking is to being a chef or gardening is to being a horticulturist.
But the strange part is that writing is part of many people’s jobs. Typically, one doesn’t garden or cook at the office.
Substack strikes me the same way. It can be used by many people in different ways to further their careers. No workshops or Morning Pages needed.
Substack once described itself as a platform for great writing, but it’s shifted. This is from the company’s current About page:
“We started Substack because we believe that what you read matters and that good writing is valuable—and as the platform has evolved, we’ve come to expand that view to include all forms of cultural work.”
Substack is a platform for great writing and so much more. It’s as much for “nonwriters” as for “writers.”
That’s why I’ve expanded the name of this community from Writers at Work to Substack Writers at Work.
3 of my favorite writing tips for Substack writers who don’t identify as “writers” (and those who do)
Tip #1: Cut adverbs that end in -ly.
⇢ Get all the tips. Write like a pro even if you don’t want to be one. Get all the How to Write on Substack Workshops and join a supportive community of writers and non-writers writing on Substack! The annual comes out to $1.50/week.