This one, this thing from the depths of perdition, is a nasty little critter.
I found it affixed to the back of my computer monitor years ago. It showed up the moment that I launched this very site, this blog.
It seemed quite reasonable, unthreatening at first. And then it croaked out, “Why even bother? You’ll never attract readers.”
I buried the pieces of its body in the back yard beneath the old oak. When it pulled itself from the shallow grave I hit it several times with a spade.
And the readers came. At first just a few, but then more, and now they sometimes arrive in great waves.
Any yet that damned undead thing shows up from time to time. I’ve showed it my web logs and the tracking reports, but still it moans, “Not enough. Not that many, really.”
I made a stake out of rolled up Google Analytics printouts and hammered it through its tiny chest. It’s staying in the hole, for now, but I see the soil shift over its grave as the sun sets.
If you find one hiding behind your screen, just leave it be. Keep writing and publishing. Eventually it will get bored and go bother one of your neighboring bloggers.
The Scary Thoughts For Writers: You’ll Never Attract Readers by Randy Murray, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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Great article! I really enjoyed the imagery of hammering the analytics through its tiny chest
One has to get tough on these beastie. You may not be able to kill them at all, just pin them into their graves.
Good luck with battling your own demons.