I Don’t Want To Write On Substack

Because I don’t read on Substack

Photo by Giulia Bertelli on Unsplash

Here’s something I feel in my bones: No matter what happens here at Medium, I don’t want to write on Substack.

I can’t say I haven’t seriously thought about it. You’d have to be an ostrich with your head stuck underneath several feet of sand to not know that writers (and readers?) are leaving this platform in droves. I like writing, but I don’t like it well enough to do it for pennies, so I have thought, “Could I get back to making dollars if I figured out how to use and leverage Substack?”

Maybe.

But the fact remains, I just plain don’t want to write on Substack. And the reasons why I don’t want to are tied up with two well-known writing platitudes.

The two sayings every writer has heard over and over

Here’s the two things all writers have heard a million times: “Write what you know,” and “If you want to be a writer, you have to be a reader.”

I think those two sayings are true, as far as they go. I try to write only about what I know (or can research) and I have always been a big reader.

The sayings are true, but that doesn’t mean they are completely true. If anything, I think they are somewhat incomplete. I might…