The Biggest Lie New Writers Believe

Nobody is waiting to discover you, they are waiting for you to become impossible to ignore

If this makes you uncomfortable, it might also make you better

Photo by Ava Sol on Unsplash

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I get the same question in emails from writers every week.

My article didn't do well. What went wrong with me?

They'll sometimes send screenshots of their statistics. At times, they send links to articles that have taken days to write. Some of these have truly fine items that needed to be read more than they were.

The first time I started editing, I struggled with those messages.

I wanted to tell every writer that the algorithm had failed them. I wanted to point out that it was a timing, a lucky or bad distribution. Those are definitely part of it, and it would be lying to suggest otherwise.

Something I have learned over the years that is difficult to articulate.

Many writers haven't been left behind.

They're just in too soon, looking for an oooh-wowww.

Writing is one of the last crafts that demand to be seen before it’s consistent. A musician knows that years of practice precede the audience. A chef is afraid to mess up recipes before opening his restaurant. An athlete knows that training comes before medals.

But writers tend to publish 5 articles and then start to think, Why am I not well known?

I understand that feeling more than I wish I did.

Every writer wants someone to read what he or she has written. No one waits for hours on a blank document, hoping it will fall into the internet.

The desire to be read is completely human.

The disappointment starts when they expect it to happen right away.

I’ve edited texts in which I was briefly impressed by a sentence and had to stop working a few minutes to take in its beauty. I have also had to edit articles which were technically flawless, but somehow I could feel nothing.

That difference matters.

Flawless grammar is a skill that readers rarely recall.

They remember honesty.

They recall the sentence that was as though someone had subtly taken one of their own.

Writing is more than arranging words in the right order. It’s about making another person feel not so lonely for a few minutes.

It’s more difficult than people think.

The Internet is not the place where the loudest shouter wins. It recalls the author who expresses one thing everyone else is afraid to say.

Another misconception I come across every day.

For many writers, publication is the end of the journey.

It isn't.

Publishing is the moment when your work begins a fresh journey of its own.

Some articles will reach their readers right from the start. Others will be sitting unnoticed for months and suddenly discover the people they've been written for. I have seen articles that would barely get a few views in their first week suddenly get lots of views months later when someone mentions them at the right time.

This is reversed as well.

Articles that burst onto the scene may be just as easily forgotten.

Numbers indicate how many people clicked!

They cannot tell you whose life quietly shifted because of something you wrote.

One insightful comment has stuck with me much longer than some articles with thousands of views.

A reader wrote to me that he felt understood after reading a work that he almost didn't post because it was so sensitive.

That is not measurable with any graph, it cannot be calculated in any analytics page.

It is easy to get lost in the revision of statistics, so much so that writers lose sight of the purpose of writing.

I've done that myself.

There were mornings when opening my dashboard felt more important than opening a blank page. My mood quietly depended on numbers that changed every few minutes. A good day made me feel talented. A slow day made me question everything I had written.

In retrospect, I can see that I'd allowed strangers to judge whether I should be confident.

That's a very tiring way of creating.

When I stopped trying to prove my worth in every article, writing got lighter.

Some pieces are meant to travel widely.

Some are designed to be given to just one person at the right time.

Both are fine, but not better or worse than the other.

When I hear that something doesn't feel like it exists for anyone as a writer, I get thoughts about trees.

The best roots take many years to grow and are hidden away in the ground, and nobody praises them. All the visible branches are there because something invisible was not stopped from growing.

Writing, likewise, is based on the same principle.

The majority of your shaping is done before anyone has heard your name.

If your sole motivation is recognition, it can be demoralizing.

When you really think about it, it’s comforting to know that growth doesn't always lead to visibility; one typically leads to the other.

There is one thing that I hope that every writer knows:

No one is obligated to listen to us.

Readers are giving us something far more valuable than a click. They are giving us minutes of a life they will never get back.

It is this privilege that should compel us to write seriously, not urgently.

Each article is another chance to build a trust rating.

Each sentence will be another opportunity for the person to pause.

Each story is an opportunity to make a reader feel a bit better understood than they felt five minutes before.

Some are recognised, and others are not.

Respect, however, is earned one honest paragraph at a time; that is still the only part of writing we completely control.

✒️ Written by Khushi Chouhan

Hey, we’re friends now that you’ve read my thoughts; that counts.

So give 50 claps, buy me **a coffee**, and let’s keep surviving chaos together💫