One of my favourite poems ever written is the nonsense-poem

Jabberwocky
by Lewis Carroll

I have comments to make, but I’m going to make you read it first.

At first, I was going to link a recital of it, but then I remembered that the performance I would have normally have linked was by Neil Gaiman so…

…maybe not.

Instead, read it for yourself and then I’ll come back to my point.

Wonderful stuff.

It’s magnificent how Carroll manages to write a 166 word story in which 42 of the words are completely made up nonsense and yet…

…and yet it makes perfect sense.

It’s one that all writers should study.

Not least so you finally understand that the shape and feel of words matters, not just the dictionary definition. Because Carroll is using words that “mean” nothing and yet they “feel” right.

Read it or listen to it again, and tell me you don’t feel what beamish and galumphing and whiffling mean.

In fact, many of the nonsense words are created by blending other words, which is why they work so well but that’s a story for another time, the shape and feel of words and portmanteaus and more.

And I will come back to that another time…

Because I don’t really want to talk about Jabberwocky at all today. I just want to set the scene for my own version of the fatherly warning.

Beware the CAW-CAW birds, and shun
The furious bantersnatch!

Because these are two online types that will kill your writing stone dead if you let ‘em.

So let’s not let ‘em!

But unlike Lewis Carroll I won’t let my made up terms stand for you to figure it out.

Who are these nefarious numpties who would nix our writing nous?

First up, the CAW-CAWs.

Which are a group that I’ve talked about a lot in my Carran’s Cabin daily list, and occasionally even named names therein.

(In fact, this whole issue of the Write Way was inspired in part by one Cabin Crewmember asking what the beef was with [redacted] which inspired me to warn you off the whole lot of ‘em…)

CAW-CAW is an acronym for Content Attention Whore - Content Attention Whore (so bad they named it twice).

They’re the group crowing away on social media, churning out mediocre engagement bait and putting little thought into it. The shallow “writers” who write not, yet tweet about writing all the time. The controversialists, the meme-poasters, the political parrots.

All desperately craving attention and churning out content like there’s no tomorrow in order to get it.

Now, this being the Write Way, we can take a moment for nuance.

Attention is not bad. It’s the first step in building a real relationship with your readers.

Attention is not bad. Memes are not bad. Heck, even political content has its place.

But we all know there’s a difference between those who want to get your attention to build a relationship and those that want to get your attention just because they want your attention.

They don’t wanna go any deeper because they’ve got no deeper places to go.

But if you’re not careful then even if you’re not a CAW-CAW…

…you can start to crow just like them.

It starts with a little jealousy. You want that engagement. Maybe you should stop posting your niche content, stop building a strong fanbase. Maybe you could be a little more engagement-heavy. Wade into a few more arguments. Be a bit more controversial than you actually are. Take a stronger stance than you actually agree with…

And before you know it, your greed for engagement is shaping your content. You’re sticking to what your audience likes instead of what they need.

You’re spending less time doing the hard work of real writing and more time creating clickbait crap.

You’re spending less time reading your teacher’s books and studying his advice, and more time posting pictures of them online in the hope of a retweet or some attention from the guru.

You’re creating an awful lot of smoke, for very little fire.

How do you fix it?

By revisiting our favourite advice here on the Write Way.

Read a lot of old stuff, spend less time on social media and write a lot.

It ain’t sexy but it works. Because the truth is if you want to be deep, you have to dig deep! You have to actually study and understand things at more than a shallow CAW-CAW level.

This is the fundamental change, the slow and unsexy one of becoming more interesting so you can relate to your readers at a deeper level.

But there’s also a simple mindset shift you can make right now to improve this.

Stop asking if your audience will be interested in your posts.

Start asking if YOU’RE interested in them.

In other words, start from what you want to say and then build an audience who are also interested in it, instead of being a metric-obsessed captive creator who starts with the audience and then tries to find ideas that they like.

I’m going to finish this issue by reposting most of an email I wrote to Carran’s Cabin last March, called “Mr Beast has ZERO followers” because it’s hugely relevant to this.

It opened with this quote about Jimmy Donaldson who, if you don't know, is Mr Beast himself:

One of my friends once described this as the "Captive Creator" phenomenon. It's the inverse of having a captive audience - being a creator so enslaved by metrics and data that you only talk about what your audience likes and over time you lose yourself.

Now, this is a common theme among the creator set. The CAW-CAWs will tell you to post lots of ideas to "test" them and see what your audience likes. Then use those again, which then gets more engagement, and drives more audience growth. There is a place for that, but you must be careful not to get lost in chasing that data.

It's far too easy to start exaggerating those popular takes, stop posting the less popular ones, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. Until eventually, you've lost all your personality and like Mr Beast you're a slave to the lowest common denominator in your oversized audience.

Riddle me this, dear reader:

If you only post what your audience wants you to post, who is following whom?

Which is why I say Mr Beast (and many other CAW-CAWs) have zero followers. Because nobody in their audience is following them. Rather, they are following their audience.

I'm not saying data is a bad thing. I look at posts that do well, after all, I want to know what's working to get my message out. Using data to amplify your message is effective.

But it should be your message you're amplifying.

Beware warping it to fit other people. There's a reason that How to Write Bad has a whole lesson on feedback and critique, because self-censorship kills. And there's a reason that neither that, nor Speed Daemon Secrets has anything about data, even though that would probably make things sexier for the sales pages.

There are plenty things I talk about that I know drive people away, or ways I phrase things that can kill a post. I don't care. Well, I do care a little, it would be nice to go viral and get lots more people on this list and one day buying things.

But I care about integrity more!

I care about guarding against becoming a MrBeast or one of those lame digital writers on X-Twitter.

So I talk about stuff deliberately that drives people away. I make it deliberately difficult to get on this list in the first place and then I still email it things that drive people out again. I'm ornery and iconoclastic and irritable and use words like ornery and iconoclastic and stop to look up whether it should be who or whom in the bolded question above.

Because all of that is me, and much as I like you dear reader, this is my newsletter.

And when all is said and done, I'd take the thousands that follow me over the millions that are followed by MrBeast and the CAW-CAWs any day.

But I mentioned two mortal foes of the writer… And the second of those is almost the opposite of the controversialist content crappers, and that’s the furious bantersnatch! Also known as…

…the topic of next week’s Write Way. Because this is already stretching long and I would rather go deep on one idea than scattergun across seven.

So join me next week for more, and meanwhile, may your pipe produce more smoke than fire and your pen more fire than smoke,

James Carran, Craftsman Writer

fin

But not quite fin for the fine folks in Craftsman’s Corner who keep the lights on around here.

For them…

…well that’s for them to see. You don’t get it unless you’re a paidup member of Craftsman’s Corner.