“It’s the best time there’s ever been to be somebody who can write something coherent quickly…I find it relaxing to work. I put things out. People yell at me. I will write again the next day.”
That’s not a quote from a struggling creator. Or an aspirational writer. Or even an Instagram influencer.
It’s Substacker Matt Yglesias from
who has thousands of readers and carved out a name for himself as a prodigious blogger for about 20 years.If you’re not familiar, check out this Washington Post profile on him.
Thinking of Matt’s example and crazy output, here’s the question:
How can you succeed with online writing? What tips can we pick up when we want to create for years?
Be consistent
Look beyond the politics, and you’ll see that Matt was the apex of online writing in the 2000s.
He started when he was 20, he’s now 41, and he’s had so many opinions and takes in the time since, he probably can’t remember them all. No matter, he keeps going.
He is sometimes controversial, but beyond that, he’s plain consistent.
For two decades, Yglesias has been boring. A million boring posts, across many platforms, into many hard boards — into the brains of like-minded liberals, under the skin of policy experts and the extremely online. He has bored right through the 21st century and emerged exactly where he began: blogging for himself.
Fellow Substacker Max Read from said this about the profile and Yglesias:
But the key lesson, the thing I would impart to any aspiring bloggers, content creators, or newsletter proprietors, is that the cornerstone of internet success is not intelligence or novelty or outrageousness or even speed, but regularity.
Read makes a special note to say “regular” over “consistency” because in his words consistency “sort of implies quality.”
Quantity does help produce quality, however, even if it not every piece is sensational or technically brilliant — the body of work improves over time (usually).
I’d say this isn’t true when you make a *regular* effort to be worse, to go down a level (insert whatever talking head you want here).
But if you are striving to learn more, be more nuanced, consistency will make you better than you were previously (though you may never be the best).
(The 10,000 hours things has routinely been debunked).
Be curious
The profile goes on to ask if Matt has changed his opinions and shifted his thinking over the years.
That matters, but it doesn’t—because we will all change right?
If we’re going for decades, not days then change will be part of that process.
We’ve been conditioned to think that we can never be wrong with a take, but instead, it’s a journey and evolution of thinking.
The stereotype is that every take has to be nuanced and correct. Instead, what Yglesias proves—and what that profile points out — is tha the brings up issues and points, sometimes with doubt and uncertainty.
Does that mean everything we ever think will change or should change? No.
But as the commercial says, stay curious my friends.
*Broad niche
I just broke for a point that doesn’t conform to a nice homily structure.
One of the things I’ve become stuck on in recent years is having too narrow of a niche.
That can give you a foothold, but then limits what your writing can ultimately be or the path of curiosity.
Instead it needs to be slightly broader, but familiar.
Yglesias writes about politics and policy. Which is a niche — albeit a nicely broad one.
Anne Helen Peterson writes broadly about culture + tech
Hung Up by Hunter Harris is celebrity culture
I started this newsletter is to provide an outlet for discussing online writing and creativity. I think it’s broad enough? But I’m still exploring
These parameters give enough room to explore while also providing sufficient boundaries, like a wide hiking trail.
But having some marked trail or a general destination is what makes the writing more interesting and valuable over time, instead of slicing in every direction with a machete.
I’ve done this before, dear Substacker, and it’s not fun for the one doing the cutting and doesn’t attract too many interested people until the cutting is done.
I’m still marking the trail with this, but hopefully, the random cutting won’t be too intense.
Be content
Please read that word as “being satisfied” rather than “content” that you produce. So funny that the word goes both ways.
Because being content with your content? It’s the opposite of a creator’s life and mindset.
That very restlessness is what many of us (I’ll use “I” statements…) depend on to be consistent and to be curious.
If we were content, there wouldn’t be that much to write about.
I’m remembering a scene from the recent TV show, Fleishman is In Trouble. One of the characters is a writer, who recently quit her magazine job, but peppers her friends with hot takes and ideas and none of her non-writer friends know what to say or think.
If you’ve never been there before, you’re not a writer, artist, creator or entrepreneur.
But I can’t get this article out of my head about staying put, I shared it last week, but here it is from Comment.
It’s called “Repair and Remain” and the subhead is devastating:
There are a lot of ramifications beyond creating in that statement and the essayist wasn’t specifically referring to creative work — he talks about staying in relationships and helping people navigate difficult things even when you’re not sure of the payoff (written from a Christian lens).
So…what does it have to do with creative work?
Use X to get more followers now.
Do Y to unlock hidden growth hacks.
How are you not doing Z already?
In my day job, that’s the world I often live in. Not to say tactics don’t have value, but jumping between them repeatedly seems to be a marketer’s favorite past time.
I was on a call with a company the other day (I’m looking for a job!) and they mentioned how they don’t take great care of their current customers. In marketing parlance, that’s called customer retention.
Do you usually optimize for retention?
For taking care of those around us?
I don’t.
This isn’t a call to never experiment, to never move, to never change, but if that is *all* you do, then what are you actually doing?
In other words, what is the strategy? What’s the through line? What are you actually trying to accomplish?
And better yet, what if it doesn’t happen right away? Can you be content?
Quick attention means quick forgetting.
Adopt a long-term mentality.
More Things
The Crane Wife by CJ Hauser at The Paris Review.
“Ten days after I called off my engagement I was supposed to go on a scientific expedition to study the whooping crane on the gulf coast of Texas.”
What a gut punch of a first line! Hauser has a new book of essays out which I randomly found on a trip to the library this week. Read the essay, it’s really good.
Putting Ideas into Words by Paul Graham. Lot of talk by me and others (like Paul Graham!) about how writing helps us think. This reinforces the point. For those that don’t know, Paul Graham is a famous venture capitalist / tech guy.
Little Beginnings Everywhere by Steven Johnson at Adjacent Possible. Good note about how a lot of great projects begin with little scraps and quotes. Collect these into an idea file and save for late.
Quit: A Framework for Giving Up by Justine & Olivia Moore at Accelerated. This is a topic that I don’t think gets talked about enough, especially because I find myself dealing with it all the time — in work, in work projects, in personal. It also ties nicely to the “Be Content” point I made above — there’s a balance.
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Keep going,
-Josh Spilker