jvb—good post; I agree with the central message: if you’re a writer, no reader owes you anything—not their attention, not their sympathy, not their cognitive effort, not their patience, not their money, not their world-view. You have to earn all of it, word by word, line by line, chapter by chapter.
More general point: there’s a huge ecosystem of advice out there on writing, outreach, marketing, advertising, public relations, etc. Much of it has dubious content, but a large proportion of it exemplifies good, direct, actionable writing.
In other words, popular books on topics like advertising (e.g. by marketing guru Seth Godin) don’t always deliver useful ‘object-level’ advice, but they are usually written in an extremely effective and compelling way that’s worth studying at a meta-level.
jvb—good post; I agree with the central message: if you’re a writer, no reader owes you anything—not their attention, not their sympathy, not their cognitive effort, not their patience, not their money, not their world-view. You have to earn all of it, word by word, line by line, chapter by chapter.
More general point: there’s a huge ecosystem of advice out there on writing, outreach, marketing, advertising, public relations, etc. Much of it has dubious content, but a large proportion of it exemplifies good, direct, actionable writing.
In other words, popular books on topics like advertising (e.g. by marketing guru Seth Godin) don’t always deliver useful ‘object-level’ advice, but they are usually written in an extremely effective and compelling way that’s worth studying at a meta-level.