Focus on the Ship, Not the Wake

An artist on my email list shared her frustration with the social universe and its effect on her motivation to share her work. She put things out in the world, and didn’t get many likes or comments. She became disenchanted with Instagram (although it’s a great medium for her visual pieces.)

This affects writers as well. We labor, we publish, … we wait.

It’s hard putting your work out in the world. But it’s even harder when you hear nothing back in response.

When All You Can See is the Wake

We cannot see the people who encounter our work, or watch its effect on them. All we see are the digital signals curated and presented on online platforms. So, we search for indications that we have found an audience:

• How many people opened the email?
• How many comments or likes did a post get?

Likes, shares, and comments are the digital wake left behind by human behavior.

Like the wake left by a ship, they show us where a ship has been and where it might be heading. For example, if an email you send gets a high open rate, you can safely assume that the subject interests many of its recipients. If a post generates heated discussion in the comments, you’ll know you touched a nerve.