Could you write Faster Horses?

Welcome to The Writing Rundown, a weekly newsletter that offers advice, short essays, and reading suggestions to help driven writers (like you!) improve their writing craft. It's nice to see you here! If someone forwarded you this email because they love your writing, you can subscribe here.

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but building on the new.” — Socrates

You’ve likely heard this phrase from Henry Ford a few dozen hundred times before:

The fact that Ford never said this is a detail for discussion in another essay at some point.

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With the quote, we got a slew of blowhard business people who decided that if the Great and Powerful Henry Ford didn’t need to ask his customers what they wanted when he was building and mass-producing the factory-made automobile, then they don’t have to either.

It happens with us as writers as well. I remember a conversation I once had with a writer about their nonfiction book writing process. It went something like this:

Me: “Have you asked your clients what questions they’d want you to answer?”
Them: “No, but I’m going to run ads with my top ideas and see which perform best.”
Me: “Or—I’m just brainstorming ideas here—you could talk to them and ask them.”
Them: “Nah, I know what they want.”
Me: “OK, but part of the reason you are struggling with getting started on the manuscript is that you don’t know what to write about for your readers.”
Them: “Yeah. It’s a real mystery.”
Me: “And you could solve that mystery by…I don’t know…talking to them and asking them what they want‽”

You can see how the conversation descended into a vortex from there. And it isn’t that they had a bad idea (running ads with some different ideas to test opinions and interest is a special level of creative problem solving I hadn’t really considered before!).

But also…you could talk to them!

The past few months, I’ve become quite disenchanted with The Writing Rundown. With Craft Your Content as a whole. With myself in general. I’m sure you’ve noticed from the sporadic inbox arrival schedule.

Thing is, when I ask if people like the essay or the links and resources…or all of the above…it ends up being “essay” or “all of the above.” Yet when we send a TWR with a lengthy or researched essay, we get big numbers of unsubscribers.

I’m not sure if they’re just being nice or something.

“Which isn’t a bad thing” is what I would tell my coaching clients. Do not measure the worth of your writing on a number of people who opt-out of your ideas and sharing; that is a them decision, not a you consequence! When it happens enough, though…

It is indicative of a problem.

A problem I am in the throes of understanding and attempting to solve.

The first step is going to be a shift in The Writing Rundown. Every weekend, you will still get an email from me, with links and resources and Untranslatable Words and whatnot.

Very occasionally, there will be an essay as well.

We’ll be shifting to essays somewhere else, location-to-be-determined (thanks Substack for platforming verified neo-Nazis…please note the sarcasm here…)

• We might start sending periodic essays through email on a weekday.
• We might begin publishing them, alongside new articles, to the CYC website (remember when we used to write and publish there‽)
• We might begin posting them to my personal site, throwing back to the blogging days of yore.
• Someone mentioned LinkedIn, and though becoming “a voice” there makes me want to throw up in my mouth, it isn’t the worst idea.
• We tested out Medium for a bit, but I don’t like the idea of folks having to pay to use a platform (though I do love the fact that other writers are getting their coins there!)

Needless to say, the next 3-6 months are going to be full of change around here.

Actually, the next couple of months are going to be quiet.

While the goal remains to make money, support my team, and (perhaps selfishly, foolishly, quite sillily) the most important thing is to help people to become the writers they’ve always dreamed of being…I’m so overwhelmed it makes me want to crawl into a wintery cave and ignore the world as I try to figure out what the heck all of this means and how to do it and what to do next.

It has been a pleasure sharing these long and rambling thoughts periodically since 2015 with you (and well before that for the OG Ophelia’s Webb crowd!)

Here’s to new beginnings! See you more properly in the spring. 😏

What You Missed on Craft Your Content …

Our articles have the same mission we do — to help you to make your own words even better!

• ICYMI: Don’t miss our round-up for the best writing our team found in 2023.
• From the Archives, December 2015: Guest writer Aleah Taboclaon dives into the phenomenon of misattribution and why it is important in today’s content writing and social sharing world.

In Other Reading This Week …

Need more insights and inspiration for your writing and mindset?

• Anyone else bouncing along the floor of writing motivation and schedules after the bliss of holiday season timey-wimey? This piece over on Publication Coach has some good steps for getting back to your writing after a break.​
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• Have you written a book, or maybe you’re planning on it? Well, the right endorsers putting their blurb and social sharing stamp of approval on it can be make-or-break for your success. Karen Whiting shares how to find the right endorsers for your book over on The Write Conversation.​
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• Imagine starting a book club with a little group of readers…and eventually evolving into a massive community that travels the world to those book locations. Ok, you don’t have to imagine it, since ConvertKit’s Isa Adney profiled Hayley Solano’s The Enchanted Book Club.​
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• As we wade through the dregs of media awards season, I found this piece from TVLine on beloved television shows that never won a single Emmy award refreshing. It isn’t always about the awards and bestseller lists and everything in between.
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• Speaking of faster horses…let’s talk AI. Is it for making money, or is it for making art? I’m still curious about the various uses of AI for writers, but the more I read the more I am pulled toward YIKESTOWN NOPE BRO NOPE! Why? Author Chuck Wendig digs into it, complete with relations between Batman and Super Mario (now that’s art!).

Weekly Writing Tip …

A quick chance to learn from the masters.

“Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.” — Theodore Levitt

Untranslatable …

Exquisite words from other languages.

Shemomedjamo (შემომეჭამა) [sheh-mo-MEHD-jyah-mo] (v.) – From the (European) Georgian language, shemomedjamo is the act of eating way beyond the point at which you are full, just because the food is so delicious. It is thought to translate roughly as “I accidentally ate the whole thing.” Sorta synonyms: surfeited, overindulged, gormandized

This Week’s Writing Resource …

Why not use the tools at your disposal?

​Kaitlyn Arford Freelancer’s Thread — With a slew of layoffs happening in the content marketing and journalism industries the past fortnight, Kaitlyn comes through with a list of freelancing opportunities and publications for you to pitch over on Threads.

For the Upcoming Week …

Because we all need a good chuckle to start things off right!

Hashtag---Goals?

'Til next time ~ Elisa