When You Self-Publish, Take More Risks
How high should your bar be?
Shout out to two Comedy Bizarre subscribers who posted headlines in a previous writing Challenge and just had funny humor pieces published in Points In Case this week.
“Ways to Recover After Waving Back at Someone Who Didn’t Wave at You” by Joey Coon
“Our Friendcation Will Be Planned Behind John Rawls’s Veil of Ignorance” by Brett Werenski
Loved both of those.
Also, a reminder that since May has more Saturdays than usual (five total), we’re done with the Weekend Writers’ Room for the month.
The Writers’ Rooms are always on the first and third Saturdays.
So, the next Weekend Writers’ Rooms will land on Saturdays June 6 and June 20.
Onward to today’s post…
I’ve been writing some posts lately about self-publishing, and how much it’s helped me as a writer. The latest is about my journey on Medium.
And the prior one was a more general meditation on self-publishing.
There was a point I overlooked, though, and I wanted to riff on it now.
That point is about our self-standards and self-limitations.
In my experience, writers vary quite a bit in their self-imposed standards. When you publish in a gatekeeper-approved site, your comedy piece is accepted by an editor, so the standards question is nullified a bit. Your piece gets accepted, so you think, “Okay, great. My writing was good enough for that editor, so the piece must be decent.”
But when you self-publish, the lack of this external standard leaves a void that you can psychologically fill with looming questions: “Is this good enough? Should I even bother self-publishing this? What if this sucks?”
How we answer those questions varies from writer to writer, and I’ve noticed that some writers are just “always hustling” and have a rather nice lack of self-regard and lack of self-imposed constraint. They just self publish a ton of stuff, say on Medium or Substack, and depending on the writer or the piece, the quality varies, but the important point is they’re kind of unstoppable. They just publish, publish, publish. Good for those writers.
And then there are other writers who are more reluctant, or self-critical, or “careful” or whatever you want to call it, and they seem to rely more on external standards, or at least they worry more, and they are more risk-averse about whether their work measures up. So they self-publish much less.
Of course, this distinction is really a spectrum, and the in-betweens exist too. And being prolific matters too. All else equal, some writers self-publish more simply because they write more.
But which of these approaches is better: be risk-averse and careful, or be less careful and self-publish more?
I say the first option is better: the more prolific, less self-aware option where you self-publish more often.
This is for three reasons.
One. Getting your work out into the world is psychologically important. It builds momentum. Once you publish a little, you’ll publish more and more. Inertia is powerful. It’s hard to stop a writer who’s cooking. And it’s hard to start a writer who’s dedicated to standing still.
Two. Real world feedback, while not the be-all-end-all, is important to the process of honing your craft. When you put your work out in public, you can see how real audiences respond. Each piece is a data point that helps you just a little.
Say you self-publish ten things, and maybe eight of them don’t do much, and the ninth gets a nice response, and the tenth pops off. That’s good data. Your patter-recognition-loving brain can use that data.
Three. Your risk-aversion fears are overblown. People remember the hits, not the misses. Our creeping fear that people will judge our poor work is mostly misguided.
The actual situation is that poor or middling work is for the most part ignored and forgotten quickly. A few people read some mediocre writing and go “huh” and then move on and forget it, and no one shares it and no one else reads it. There’s too much noise in the world for people to care about 99% of writing. There’s no “committee of haters”—composed of a bunch of cool writers you admire—that rounds up bad writing and laugh at how bad it is, and says, “let’s ban this dumb dweeby wannabe from ever writing again.”
That committee was never formed.
But when you self-publish a piece that hits something clever, or that strikes a nerve, people will notice.
The comedy that hits does far more good than the ones that don’t hit do damage.
So what? What’s the upshot?
When you self-publish as a writer, keep the bar pretty low—especially at first.
As you gain experience, sure, you can raise it a little, but this is mostly because you’re getting better. It shouldn’t necessarily be because you’re becoming more careful and cautious.
The Gods of Art and Comedy love a bit of devil-may-care, throw caution to the wind attitude.
So, the standards for hitting “publish” on a self-published piece should be: “Did I do my best here? Did I self-edit this to the best of my ability? Do I like this? By my own own lights, I am decently happy to have this online?”
The point is not to be sloppy and careless. The point is to do your best, hit publish, and move on.
The standards and questions you should ignore: “Are people going to hate this though? Does the fact that three editors passed on this piece mean it’s actually no good and I should trash it? Does this measure up to my cosmic, ultimate standard of the kind of work I want to do eventually?”
Those questions are red herrings.
And if you don’t believe me, just remember Jack Handey’s advice: “If you’re a young writer, send it back out. You want to get published.”
Get your work out there.
Hit publish.
Have a good weekend!