An Open Letter To Writers Who Write Open Letters
It’s not me, it’s you.
Dear Medium Writers Who Write Open Letters On Medium,
I know how hard it can be to fart out topics to write about on Medium and keep your stats from looking like flat valleys instead of mountain ranges.
But this trend of penning open letters to everyday objects has to die.
And it has to die HARD.
Because the jig is up. I’m onto your writer-y con. You’re exposed for all to see.
For some strange reason, a plethora — an overabundance, even — of Medium writers have developed the irritating superpower of “immunity from new and various article formats”.
Instead of putting in the work to give birth to an original idea, you looked around your room for inspiration, and a light bulb turned on that shouldn’t have turned on.
“I know! I’ll write an open letter to…my ashtray!”
“Hmmm, nobody’s written any open letters to my couch lately. I might as well be the first!”
“My cat’s breath smells like an open sewer filled with bad beef — I think people will want to read an open letter about that!”
Some of you have even managed to barely transcend the silly fad of writing open letters to everyday things, and opted for the silly fad of writing open letters to organizations, institutions, and important people who will never read your pleas for common sense.
“An Open Letter to the Girl Scouts of America — You’re Basically America’s Seasonal Drug Dealer”
“An Open Letter to Elon Musk — You’re Really Just An Intergalactic Christopher Columbus, And Christopher Columbus Was A Colonial Dick”
“An Open Letter to San Francisco — Your Streets Are Covered in Used Syringes and Human Fecal Matter, But Thanks For Keeping the City Clean By Banning Plastic Bags”
Regardless of what you actually choose to write about, the idea that you can present a mundane concept to mass audiences in such a generic fashion lives rent-free in far too many writers’ skulls.
Look, I admire your determination to get a story out quickly to build an audience, your commitment to practicing your craft, and your ability to create a coherent blog post from a lame-ass subject.
But surely you can come up with better topics to write about, a new format to present them in. Surely you can muster the moxie to buck some trends like some sort of writerly Kurt Cobain.
Because, believe me you, if you keep this up, if you can’t learn how to get good at Medium, some moron will soon catch on to your literary ruse and write an article that tries too hard to be cheeky, condemning the whole lot of you with the same device you’re all guilty of employing OH WAIT FUCK —
Sincerely,
A Concerned, Cranky Medium Writer
If you need more advice on getting killer ideas for Medium articles, check out this blog post I wrote:
