While the science of the brain has progressed beyond this simple perspective, it does embody the nature of our argument: Are we creating content or are we creatively writing?

Writers of the 21st Century Unite!

If you want to be a Writer, ignore everything you just read.

Not to discount data because we are a data-driven society, I must take the other side of this argument and say:

Please, if your goal is to be a writer, not just a content generator, if your goal is to tell meaningful stories which connect to an audience, not just click off a ‘done’ maker on your list of things to do, if your goal is to plumb the depths of the human experience, its depravities, its wonders, its ability to survive under the most inhuman of conditions, to fight for freedom or justice or equality after hundreds or even thousands of years, if your goal is to take a reader to the precipice of madness, into a dark time of the soul, to wander without friend, family or even a hated enemy, if your goal is to promote the true aspirations of the human spirit, excellence, mastery and purpose, directing one’s existence toward the supreme effort we must all make before we die, I beg you — don’t do anything this preceding article tells you.

Why? Because writing is not just about metrics.

Writing is about feeling. Writing is about expression. Writing is about making something transcend mere metrics. Writing should confuse, enlighten and enrage sometimes in the same sentence. If you came here to Medium to WRITE not CONTENT CREATE then the rules of this data analysis are not for you.

Content creation is about metrics. How many sheeple can you get to read your listicle about the ‘Seven Success Secrets of Subterranean Supermen’ and convince them using the sixth grade language, 17 word sentences to agree this document is worthy using such execrable metrics.

I profess to be just a lowly writer, not a content specialist. When I see writers who have 22,000 followers I bow my head because often such writers create the rare piece of content that is indeed excellent. Thus they warrant those numbers when such a piece of compelling work is created.

But when I read through most of that work, it is less than ideal. Repeating the same tired aphorisms seen in self-help books the world over, translated into hundreds of languages which ultimately say: You are not enough. Read my writing and be TRANSFORMED into a new a luminous being who will NOW have the ability to transcend your current existence into something better.

Okay. Everyone’s got a hustle.

My hustle is writing. I refuse to create listicles. I refuse to create CONTENT. I refuse to treat my time spent putting pen to paper (or electrons to screen) as the generation of mindless notations which may or may not help anyone but I am required to do it because we have a world of people hungry for meaning, for rules which can help them achieve the super-success they all believe they are entitled to.

Me? I am going to write. Tell stories. Create protagonists who are flawed, who aspire to greatness and fail; antagonists who would be great people if they could just stop being angry, or fearful, or jealous of other people’s success.

Writing is harder than content management. The rules change while you watch. Garnering success as a writer is fraught with disappointment because there are no metrics which can describe what a great writer is going to be. Your job is not to cater to metrics but to defy them with your brilliant, iconoclastic daring, your willingness to ignore what is considered the norm and step out into something beyond the realm of data: the province of the human experience — the thing which still separates us from machines.

By the standards of these metrics, no writer of the last century would have ever existed. Every one of them had habits which would make data scientists cringe, yet their work has had a significant following despite the fact their techniques were not within the diagram of the earlier analysis.

Thank you for your exhaustive work, Medium technologists and data analysts who looked at all of the information available to you using data captured here. For those people who create content, information designed to move a particular product, take a particular stance, organize a particular movement, this should prove invaluable.

For the rest of you who aspire to create, dream, aspire, inspire, intrigue, enrage or enlighten? Get back to work.

Those stories won’t write themselves.

Thaddeus Howze is a writer, essayist, author and professional storyteller for mysterious beings who exist in non-Euclidean realms beyond our understanding. Since they insist on constant entertainment and can’t subscribe to cable, Thaddeus writes a variety of forms of speculative fiction to appease their hunger for new entertainment.

Thaddeus’ speculative fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies: Awesome Allshorts: Last Days and Lost Ways (Australia, 2014), The Future is Short(2014), Visions of Leaving Earth (2014), Mothership: Tales of Afrofuturism and Beyond (2014), Genesis Science Fiction (2013), Scraps (UK, 2012), and Possibilities (2012).

He has written two books: a collection called Hayward’s Reach (2011) and an e-book novella called Broken Glass (2013) featuring Clifford Engram, Paranormal Investigator.