This is The Nooner, a (very short) daily newsletter slash podcast that has its very own section within Dispatches from Inner Space.
To see the first post, which doubles as an explainer, click here.
Also a quick reminder that you can listen to the podcast version of each post wherever you listen to podcasts.
No one cares about your story
This might sound callous or cruel to you, but it’s the truth.
The only person who truly cares about your story, for its own sake, is you.
It’s a hard lesson to learn.
Back when I first set up Dispatches from Inner Space, I had to constantly strain to stop myself from publishing post after post about my story as a writer. The urge to do so was both an effort to try to justify myself (who am I to start a Substack??), and the product of an oblivious solipsism that comes with being new at something. It wasn’t that I consciously thought everyone would care about the backstory of my identity as a writer, it was just something that was very top of mind as I attempted to start publishing my work for the first time.
Now, though, I always cringe a little when I see a new Substack writer put something in their bio like, “Started this journey decades ago and finally have the confidence to share my voice!”
Great. So say something.
I react the same way to people who love talking about storytelling, but don’t have any idea how to actually tell a story.
Talking about the thing rather than doing the thing.
It’s only after someone has demonstrated mastery of something that other people will start to care what they have to say about it.
It doesn’t go the other way around.
This is, by the way, what identity politics gets so wrong. It puts personal narrative before everything.
My favorite book growing up was Ender’s Game. In it, Ender’s older siblings, stuck back on Earth instead of being recruited to save the world in space, decide to generate influence another way. They spin up pseudonymous accounts and start contributing to big conversations online. Their gambit is that by the time people figure out it’s just a couple of kids behind the pseudonyms, their reputations will have immunized them against any identity-based prejudice.
It was a prescient plotline. This kind of thing happens today all the time.
And it’s the opposite of Joe Substack, who wants to tell you that he’s a former academic with a PhD, excited to explore his true passion of short fiction!
Listen, if you want to tell people who you are, where you’re from, whatever, that’s fine. I’m not here to judge. But if you do it, do it with full, steely awareness that until you contribute something people actually care about, no one will care about you.
As for myself, I’ve made my peace with this, and frankly it’s a relief. I don’t have to be an apologist for my self, or my so-called story. I just have to try to contribute something.
Like this, here, now. If you’re an aspiring writer, or any other kind of artist or creative who hopes to be heard, I’m writing this for you. I want you to succeed. I want you to dig deep and find some gems to share.
And maybe those gems will come out of your story. But you’re going to have to spend a lot of time polishing them up, setting them in the right frames, before anyone recognizes them as anything other than a handful of rocks in an avalanche of other boring rocks.
Click at least one of these or else…
…your face will melt into a bowl of someone else’s ice cream.
No one cares about your story