Why I Prefer Medium to Substack

One of the most discouraging surprises involved in becoming a professional writer is becoming, in essential conjunction, a salesperson and a marketing amateur — even a wholesale expert in some instances!

To earn a living requires this of all professionals to a discouraging degree but is in excess pronouncement in all creative endeavors.

In both cases, this is largely for subjective and social reasons, which are merely amplified in creative domains in virtue of their overall greater dependence upon subjectivity in general compared to the average profession.

The most unfortunate effect in this situation is bad art or content — what should be called copy is labeled erroneously as content.

The more a professional must focus on this selling/capital aspect of their craft, the more it will seep into the end works produced by them, both qualitatively and quantitatively, such that the latter is causally prior to the former.

Many creators forego a professional extension of their craft altogether, as there is only so much labour power attached to our pragmatic essence as homo faber — to have a non-creative job, in such cases, is intended as an energy/inspiration-preserving tactic.

This presupposes the necessity of a professional life, which some are fortunate enough to not have to take as a given in whatever mode of givenness they are disposed to, having been materially and/or socio-culturally incidental.

Some in the American middle-class experience a species of such luck in their college experience, but (1) on average, waster it on non-craft-related matters and (2) are thus ill-prepared to materially support their craft upon graduating (indeed, quite the contrary — many under-estimate just how exhausting (par irrevocable boredom) the average non-creative job is upon the creative faculty of mind and body.)

Creative jobs permit more self-integration into one’s work in some cases — the more interested in things one in general is, the more this becomes possible (but that is not only rare, but it is educationally and socially disincentivized to be rare.)

And, from that, it becomes psychologically engrained --and thus, physiologically engrained, since we take mind and matter to be of the same world, and given the loss of psychological faculties reliably accompanying the loss of brain matter, we should take things as being parallel.

In any case, this merely draws our attention to the depths in which the creative impulse is routinely squashed. Its depths point asunder to their consequent superficialities in and of its end-work[s].

Philosophy bodes well (1) for general interest without a dilution of depth — indeed, the opposite if one is well-trained and/or disposed to it — and (2) for high-level reading and writing skills.

Retroactively, reading and writing were the only modes of education and thought I could bear to engage in before college, and that was purely from a natural aptitude towards it, coupled with bitterness and a lack of interest or value in much, generally speaking.

That is to say, ex nihilo, I became a “writer,” and so too with philosophy — the source or arche of such ex nihilo, almost like a divine (Dike) authority “speaking” from a void.

It is nothing that begets nothing and everything — thus, it was but a microcosm of the form-engendering force itself in my mind and spirit.

Writing followed naturally thereafter — it was the only professional and creative pathway that made intuitive, emotional, rational, and sense for me to prioritize.

It is the skill that life threw upon me — the second pathway to a serious developmental trajectory only after physical fitness, which has diminishing returns when compared to the sheer range of actualizable potentials in the creative domain of the mind (the nous in its intellectus.)

With fitness, the professional domain — outside of the sharing of valuable information — is limited by its competitive shallowness and its borderline professional criminality.

One must fit a customary standard of appearance to rise in that industry (which, to be fair, is true in all professional domains — this fairness does not ignore, however, the amplification of its negativity in any body-centered profession.)

Thus, for me, fitness becomes akin to personal hygiene — something Arnold Schwarzenegger has experienced into old age.

It is an aspect of my routine that facilitates and optimizes its primary concerns, such as creating, learning, and love.

All of my first published works — i.e., those with my byline involved — were through internships; following these internships, I primarily published work on Medium, developing a portfolio that eventually led to inbound freelance client generation.

Through deliberative networking following such early successes, I then found bylines in Newsweek and Bigthink.

Freelancing, while a good crutch in graduate school, is generally unsustainable without quality diminishments to one’s creative outputs (mainly because burnout develops through worrying about precarity that wreaks havoc on the lucidity and carefulness involved in the creative process.)

It is much simpler to work creatively when there is not a chronically looming indeterminacy one cannot cease to feel.

Thus, it has been a breath of fresh air to no longer experience this worry, as I now work full-time — this permits me free reign outside of work to create without the accompanying anxiety of indeterminacy that is so intense as a freelancer with no interest in directly participating in sales (something that is, unfortunately, an absolute requirement to become a professional writer.)

For, firstly, one is selling their writing. Secondly, selling themselves — though very often these states of priority are reversed, and even more often, it isn’t clear which is being prioritized.

Creativity takes an ideal form when this commercial imperative is removed.

Most of what I create is academic and, therefore, is not published under “bylines.” Insofar as I am writing something short enough for a byline to appear under a title, I also lack interest in negotiating creatively with editors to put out content.

Substack is popular, but it excessively incentivizes writers to phish for subscribers, which to me is but a re-emergence of the creativity-destroying spirit mentioned above — something Medium (at least comparatively) does not involve.

One gains subscribers on Medium as one does on YouTube — by publishing content. And, as with YouTube, the more attention one’s work attracts, the more one’s content will be monetized, making it also a source of passive income.

My interest as a writer is almost entirely intellectual and solitary — topical interest drives my productivity, not audience interest.

With freelancing, editors become one’s audience, and their interest stands between a writer and their due, both in terms of creative and monetary value.

And while — so far — the money on Medium is not good, publishing on Medium is only secondarily for the capital it accrues for me — it is a place for short-medium form writing, with or without editors, where it is seen without effort apart from writing alone.

I don’t want to phish.

Very few people’s full-time jobs — even those in creative domains — are their central passion — even creatively when that’s entailed.

A job’s purpose is to support one’s central interests in a practical way. In my case, I am fortunate, as my job is incredibly creatively stimulating, such that it purely enhances my primary passions, in addition to being pragmatic.

Medium will always be my self-publishing platform because of its contribution to such purity and practicality in my life — to switch to Substack now would be an immediate stressor.

I am a writer, and I only want to attract readers through my writing — let Medium curate and market on my behalf, not the inverse (which is how it feels trying to work on Substack.)