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Writing

I Didn’t Write This for You

You’re so vain, you probably think this post is about you

Victoria Suzanne

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Photo by Melanie Deziel on Unsplash

I’d say that writing advice was my guilty pleasure, but “pleasure” is the wrong word. Is reading still a pleasure if you disagree with everything the author says?

One thing these types of articles will always say is that you cannot write for yourself. You must write only for other people. Find out what your audience likes and write for them. To quote Super Hans from the late, great Peep Show:

“People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis. You can’t trust people.”

Just this morning, I read an article penned by one of writing’s finest minds — by which I mean someone who joined Medium three weeks ago — who counselled that writing was not, in fact, any excuse to show off either your literary prowess or your personality.

Keep sentences short, eschew words with more than two syllables (the fact that the word ‘syllable’ has three syllables feels like a cruel…

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