Why Most Writers Quit Before Their Substack Has a Chance to Work
And how to avoid that
My Medium friends can read this story over there as well.
Most people don’t quit Substack because they don’t have good ideas. They quit because they can’t wait.
That awkward first year when you publish like crazy… and nothing happens.
Your inbox is empty. You check your Substack dashboard like a gambler checking a slot machine. Nothing.
That’s the Invisible Phase of writing online.
It’s brutal. It’s quiet. And it’s where 80+% of writers disappear.
Because we want something else…
The Viral Myth
The internet and social media have messed with our sense of time.
TikToks can go viral in hours. Threads might blow up overnight. X posts explode. So naturally, we expect writing on Substack to work the same way.
But Substack isn’t TikTok. It’s not designed for virality. Not really.
We’re not chasing “likes”, we’re trying to build a habit. At least, that’s what we’re supposed to do.
And habits take time.
The myth starts when we see someone’s Substack “explode” and assume it happened out of nowhere. But behind “overnight success” is usually:
6+ months of writing into the void
100 posts nobody shared
and 1 piece that finally caught fire.
But many writers quit right before that one piece. We can’t wait.
The Medium Trap
Look, I came to Substack from Medium. And that messed with my head even more.
Because Medium feeds the opposite impulse.
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