Getting Too Good at the Wrong Thing

The siren song of subs

I worry that some of the best writers of our generation are stuck making tweets and newsletters.

And look, I love writing my newsletter. I love tweeting (especially after a glass of wine or two). But I can’t deny a growing sense that very little of this writing matters. And that it might even be harmful to my long-term goals.

My fellow newsletter & Twitter intellectualati will bristle at this claim, but we must be honest with ourselves.

How many newsletters have you printed out and put on your bookshelf?

How many articles from five or ten years ago do you still go back and read? Or recommend?

And what about tweets? Are there any threads that rise to the level of books?

Certainly, there are some. But even the great ones suffer from the ephemerality of the platforms. Naval’s epic marathon of insight would have been largely wasted if Eric Jorgenson hadn’t codified it in the Navalmanack.

If you’ve noticed me posting here less, this is why. As I spend more time working on my book, I’ve had to confront how different of a style is required for good book writing vs. good Internet writing. The over-brevity of Twitter feels awkward in print. As do the short paragraphs of a blog.

When I do start to write an article like this, I often end up realizing it’s part of some broader topic I’d like to do a book on eventually. It feels insufficient to put out some disconnected tiny piece of it because I want to package it into some greater whole and share it that way. I know this is something I need to get over, but the feeling is there.

Yet, as increasingly unvaluable as blogging feels, there would be no book without this blog. If you aren’t a conventionally laureled writer, your worth is your email list. No other metric particularly matters. And so, to some extent, you must focus on a newsletter to build that initial base of readers so you can convince a publisher that you’re worth paying attention to.

But once you’re there… then what? If I have fifteen to twenty chunks of good writing time per week, is it worth spending 20% of that time on articles?

On the one hand, yes, this is an excellent place to workshop ideas and build an audience.

On the other hand, no, because newsletters and blogs are very low-value long term. Of the hundreds of articles I’ve written, maybe three or four get mentioned by people after a few months.

So, this has been my conundrum. I can’t deny this publication's importance in getting my career to this point. But I also can’t deny the ways it might distract from my ultimate goals moving forward. And I’m unsure how much of my sense that “I need to keep publishing here and on Twitter” is an accurate assessment of the best use of my time, or merely some combination of FOMO and a desire to make numbers go up.

The best solution I’ve come to is letting pieces like this shoot out of my brain as the mood strikes me and not overly manicure something each week. Lean into periods of high output, and don’t force it when the blog isn’t flowing.

Twitter is particularly concerning, though. Good writing and storytelling is timeless. The X algorithm changes on the week. The writing style it requires is so far removed from “good writing” that you’re kneecapping yourself before the marathon. It’s more like copywriting, as my friend Nathan put it. But, again, having an audience helps sell books. And perhaps there is some way to make the most of it.

For other aspiring authors out there wondering how to best spend their time, I do think it’s worth asking if you’re getting too good at the wrong thing.

The longer-form of writing you focus on, the slower you’ll see results. But the more durable those results will be.