Why I Won’t Chase the Post That Went Viral

Today’s post is by author Lesley Krueger.

Not long ago, I wrote a note on Substack about my husband’s neurosurgery. He has multiple sclerosis and needed an operation to implant a device to deliver a drug called baclofen directly to his spine. It was a delicate procedure done by an elite neurosurgeon and her team. Afterward, he spent five days in an acute care hospital bed where he was tested, medicated and taken care of. Since we’re in Canada, the bill came to $0, as my note said.

Almost 12,000 people clicked like or follow, while many left heartfelt comments. The majority of these came from US readers who mourned their country’s lack of universal health care, some telling stories about how hard this can make their lives. One man with MS said he was having to consider declaring bankruptcy, which broke my heart. Of course, there were also five or six people who called me a Communist, or maybe five or six bots. (Do I have to say that I’m not?)

It all left me feeling disoriented, and I spent far too much time watching the numbers click up. Two hundred, 500, 1,000, 5,000, 8,000, 10,000 hits, when it slowed but didn’t stop.

How great is that? a friend asked. Isn’t that why we go on social? To trigger a response?

Good question. What are we looking for by going online? Since—as writers, artists, family members, people with jobs—we already have endless demands on our time.

When something like this happens, I think it’s valuable to hit pause and try to figure it out. Maybe we simply want a response to our social media posts. Okay, enjoy. Maybe we’re looking for validation, or to build a community. Ditto.

Or perhaps for people like me, novelists with publishers looking over our shoulders, it’s a way to find an audience. And, oh yes, to sell our books.

But here’s the thing: Does it work?

Looking back in puzzlement: How did I get here in the first place?

In 2012, when I was starting a new novel after a gap—I’d been working in film—people told me I had to put up a website. It would show potential publishers that I was serious. They said I was already behind the times in not writing a blog, and needed to spend more time online if I wanted to get published.  

Being obedient, I put up a website and began writing blogs, meanwhile working on my novel. At first, the site proved time-consuming and expensive, and in the end (spoiler alert) it didn’t help me find a publisher. Instead, when I had a good draft of the novel ready, I gave it to a friend who had edited my nonfiction book, a travel memoir. Since Susan was exclusively a nonfiction editor, I didn’t think of this as a submission. I just thought that a friend—who also happens to be an amazing editor—was going to give me a few notes. I was deeply grateful.

As it turned out, Susan loved the book and asked her boss if she could start acquiring fiction. I didn’t know it, but she’d been thinking about doing that for a while. When her boss said to go ahead, we signed a contract, and Susan has edited my three most recent novels for ECW Press. I’m afraid this is how it usually works. Contacts. Serendipity. Someone loving your book.

Yet I learned a couple of things by putting up a website (which, by the way, I keep current).

What’s to learn when you have a publisher?

One insight came longer term. In the spring of 2024, about six months after my latest novel was published, one of the ECW marketing people told me it was selling weirdly. Usually literary novels in Canada sell four times as many copies in brick-and-mortar bookstores as they sell online. Far Creek Road was doing the opposite. 

Was it because of my website? Over the past decade, the site’s audience had been growing, with hits coming from all over the world. Maybe people had heard about the book that way. It was gratifying to think my site might be paying off, although of course I also did publicity—podcasts, readings, book clubs—so I couldn’t be sure.

Here’s the second thing: I found I loved writing blogs.

At first I did it irregularly, writing about whatever struck me whenever I had the time. I kept that up for a few years, my audience quietly growing. Then the pandemic hit. Stuck at home, I began to write blogs more regularly. I mean, we had time, right? In between hyper-ventilating.

At the same time, I realized that (a) because I loved writing blogs, and (b) because more and more people were reading them, I’d stumbled into a win-win. I couldn’t see a direct line from writing the blogs to either landing a publisher or increasing sales, but that was all right. Writers want to be read, and I was happy to run with it—until things changed again a couple of years later.

This time, everyone was talking about Substack. Now my market-savvy friends said I ought to start a newsletter. Substack, Substack: a susurration on the wind.

I liked my website and it was doing well, but friends pushed, and I signed up for several online seminars. (Thank you, Jane Friedman and Dan Blank.) Listening to them, I thought launching a newsletter sounded like a lot of additional work, and hesitated. My husband’s MS means he has frequent (free) doctor’s appointments and periodic (free) medical interventions, all of which take a lot of my (free) time. Who wants to spend their few precious unmedicalized hours feeding yet another platform?

Yet since I loved writing the blogs/posts/essays, and Substack seemed to reach a more fully defined audience, I decided to go ahead—although not immediately.

Why not just jump?

Despite the airy stereotypes about novelists, I’m pretty analytical. Before starting a newsletter, I decided to analyze my website to try to identify what had been working.

It turned out that my personal essays had been getting tons of hits, along with travel stories and my occasional how-to-write posts. Especially popular were the book reviews, maybe because they weren’t locked behind a paywall.

Stepping back, I saw that most of the travel stories, personal essays and book reviews had come out of research I’d been doing for my novels. I love doing research as much as I love writing, and usually it’s pretty free-range. The novel I’m currently writing is set largely in Toronto, so I’ve been flaneusing around the city, soaking in Korean spas, buying Polish candy in a Russian supermarket, interrupting a roofer who was flying a drone. These are the types of things I prefer to write about, and when rereading the posts, I could feel my enjoyment shining through.

In his seminar, Dan Blank encouraged people to have a well-defined focus for their newsletters, and with my analysis in hand, I realized I already had one. I loved writing about my research and people read what I wrote. So I’d write a newsletter about research called Alive to the World, hoping it would inspire readers to remain just as alive to the roofers and drones and suburban spas in their own cities, and maybe pick up one of the books I reviewed.

I launched it last year, slowly gaining subscribers, and felt happy with the way it was going.

Then my note about my husband’s surgery went viral. Immediately obvious was the fact it had nothing to do with anything I usually write. As the numbers ticked up—10,000, 11,000—I watched as droves of new followers signed up as well. And wondered what to do.

That’s the question, isn’t it?

My friends were all over me about it.

I’ve never had more than 100 likes, one said.

Never gone even mildly viral, said another.

You have to write about life as a caregiver, a third one advised. Build your audience that way. Look at the response!

We-ell, I replied, my husband doesn’t like being written about. Not in any detail. Privacy, independence, dignity. All of that.

So write about yourself wearing your caregiver hat.

But (a) how do you write about caregiving without writing about the person being cared for?

And (b) I don’t want to.

I really do like writing about research, and squirm at the thought of getting too intimate and revelatory (at least outside of my novels, where names get changed). But as I’ve said, I write the occasional personal essay for my newsletter, and so I challenged myself. Should I go all TikTok and make the newsletter about myself? Maybe go in harder on political issues about the treatment of disabled people?

Because, after all, that’s what people responded to. En masse.

So … maybe?

Once again, I went analytical, monitoring responses since the viral-ish note, trying to find out whether people have been reading my notes and newsletters since coming on board.

I didn’t get many new subscribers (even though the stack is free) but it turns out that the ones who signed up have been reading what I’ve written. Good. No one wants disengaged subscribers. Maybe you can boast a list 5,000 strong, but if only 20% open your newsletter, the number means little.

It’s true, however, that dozens of people who followed me promptly disappeared. I assume they hit follow so I would follow them back, and doubt anything I write will generate a response.

Yet among the many new followers, some people seem genuinely engaged, and I’m grateful. There’s been a jump in my readership and in responses to my notes, and here’s the thing: I haven’t done anything differently than I did before.

Therefore?

Despite the viral flurry, I’ve decided not to change what I write about. No racing after virality, no bending myself out of shape, no trying to copy whoever has reached the top of the pops this week. I’ve learned it isn’t necessary, and suspect it might even be counterproductive—certainly if people start to see my writing as inauthentic. Instead, I hope I can gradually reach more people who love to read what I love to write, and take it from there.

Maybe you disagree. But if this approach appeals, this is what worked for me:

Read through your old newsletters—blogs, essays, articles, books—analytically. Which ones have the most energy? What do you clearly enjoy writing about? Bet it will shine through.Determine which of your posts, books, essays got the most readers. Are they the ones you like best? The ones you think are well written and engaging? If not, that’s interesting, too. But I suspect you’ll find an overlap.Ask yourself what underlying subject your most successful posts share. Successful in both senses. Are they about your family? Your work? Politics, gardening, sports? Do these ones, the best ones, have anything in common? Squint hard. This is important. If you’re been struggling to discover a focus, you might find it here.Dan Blank suggests having a central theme, but four or five different subjects within that framework. Works for me. I would find it boring to write nothing but book reviews or personal essays, only travel stories or an unbroken succession of how-to posts. I also suspect people would get tired of reading about the same thing from the same writer all the time. What four or five subjects can you alternate? Ones that fall under your general umbrella.

I would be happy to go viral again when writing something more central to my work, and to build a real community. If not, at least I’m doing what I want to do. In the end, it’s a case of cherishing what you love—and by the way, that’s a caregiver talking.