Writing About Ordinary Life vs. Writing Viral Content

Is there a difference?

Quick Access to the 43 Creative Nonfiction Archive Lessons

I have a very popular story over on Medium I want to share with you. It’s called “My Life is Very Ordinary But it Still Sells.”

5,700 people have read that story.

281 of them commented.

Why?

Because most of us are pretty ordinary. We’re not celebrities or royals.

We haven’t rescued penguins or sailed solo around the globe.

We live ordinary, sometimes slightly boring (talking about myself here), lives and we want to know that still matters.

SPOILER: It does!

So today, let’s chat about ordinary lives compared to writing “viral” content.

In my experience, they’re can be one and the same. But I’d love to hear your experiences, too. Share in the comments your thoughts on viral content vs. sharing ordinary lives.

This is a longer one, and I share some tough parts of my story today, so grab a coffee and get comfy.

“My stories never go viral.”

I hear this a lot from writers. It’s the ultimate, right? To go viral—Wow! How great would that feel!

Okay, yes. I’m not going to tell you it’s awful. I’ve “gone viral” several times with my writing and it feels pretty great for a day or two. That’s about how long a viral article lasts.

But it’s also a mixed bag, because…

those catchy viruses are all about situation and luck:

• A catchy title.

• Being in the right place at the right time.

• Coughing up the right topic.

• Getting spread around by a pushy algorithm or because of controversy.

You can learn to write better titles. You can research topics that MIGHT be popular. You can be more controversial (if that’s your thing).

But do you know what a viral article doesn’t mean?

It doesn’t mean you’re a good writer. It also doesn’t mean you’re connecting with your audience.

I see terribly written viral articles every day. Some use AI. Some stories even go viral because they’re bad.

(As

Linda Caroll

warned recently, engaging with terrible writing only helps it get shared more).

So…Here’s the good news.

A viral article (or lack of one) has nothing to do with how good a writer you are.

“How do I know I’m any good?”

Throwing the tough questions at me! That’s okay—I’ve got you.

Let’s start with this:

“Am I a good writer?” is a hard question to answer. We can ALWAYS improve. We can always get better.

Also, what some people enjoy reading, others hate. Nora Ephron was a famous writer who many people would consider good at what she did. I like some of her movies, but personally, I couldn’t get through even one of her books. It wasn’t my thing at all. (Sorry if you love her!)

So can we agree to throw the “Am I good?” question away? It’s not useful.

Try this one instead: “Does my writing connect with my readers?”

And if you want to sell stories: “Do editors like my writing?”

It’s all about the feedback loop.

If you have eight readers, are any of them telling you they enjoyed or related to your story? Great! You’re doing well.

Now, how can you connect even better? That’s the question to ask yourself.

If you want to sell your stories, are editors or clients buying? How can you sell more?

Those questions are far more helpful than “Why aren’t I viral?” and “Am I good?”

Now, about those ordinary stories.

“We’ll pay you $350usd for it.”

My first reaction was “fantastic!”

My second was shock. Why would anyone want to hear about my boring life? Let alone pay good money for it. But, over a decade later, they still do.

As a writing coach, I’ve found this is a common sticking point for new writers. They think they have nothing interesting to offer.

Only the best and the brightest

For a long time, I believed life had to be exceptional to be worthwhile.

It was probably an unsurprising conclusion for a young person to make considering my peer group was full of exceptional people. Three were successful musicians by age 16: topping charts and landing recording deals. Another two were athletes preparing for international competitions. Several ran marathons around the world. One became a consultant to the UN.

We were prepped by the adults around us to think big. “You’ll change the world,” they told us.

I tried. I really did. I excelled at university, but I wasn’t like my exceptional friends. By the time I was 23 — married, substitute teaching, and planning a family — I realised I might be fairly ordinary.

A daisy rather than some exotic bloom.

For me, that meant unworthy and I couldn’t stand it.

And then something happened that made me crave an ordinary life.

Losing my ordinary life

I dreamed of being a writer but, like many new writers, I worried I had nothing important to say. I didn’t have dramatic stories of deep sea dives and mysterious discoveries. No Antarctic adventures or secret investigations in the jungle.

In fact, when I started taking writing seriously in my late 20s, I was sick and mostly bedridden.

My health had taken a sharp turn at the end of my short, unremarkable teaching career. Now, all I could do was wait and see if I’d get a normal life back.

Every day, I spent as much time as I could with my 2-year-old daughter, but often I could only manage minutes at a time. My husband became her main parent and I watched from a distance, sleeping most of the day, writing when I could, and drinking my food — a chocolate flavoured vitamin-filled shake designed to sustain me without further damaging my inflamed gut.

Writing my future on a doctor’s note pad

My doctor eventually delivered a Crohn’s disease diagnosis.

Exhausted from the long drive to the hospital, I sat in his tiny office and fixated on his clasped hands, as if his interlaced fingers held the clues to my future: a fortune teller hiding visions in his palms.

“What does that mean? Will I get better?” I asked.

Life at that point was barely life at all. The heavy medication regime left me immunocompromised. Even catching a cold could and had sent me to the ER.

“It’s hard to say. Crohn’s is lifelong — there’s no cure — but it’s different for everyone.”

“How bad is mine?”

“Severe.”

I threw out the idea of changing the world. All I wanted now was something close to normal. A nice ordinary life where I got to raise my child, and maybe do some meaningful work.

A walk with her mom turned into a best seller

I was left with the question: Can writers have unexceptional lives and still get paid?Did I have anything worthy to share with the world when my world had become so small and unremarkable?

There’s the obvious solution: Write about other people with interesting lives.

I love to interview or research people with fantastic stories to tell, strong opinions to share. But I’d fallen in love with the personal essay and, with AI content being widely used, writing demands more personal input than ever before anyway, even if it’s an informational piece.

We want stories that can’t be written by a robot.

Celebrity and noncelebrity memoirs continue to be popular. But, encouragingly for us, the chart toppers aren’t necessarily about exciting lives.

Voted #1 Best Memoir of the Past 50 Years, Vivian Gornick’s beautiful work Fierce Attachments is about going on walks with her mother.

It’s not an unusual story like Educated or Spare. She isn’t a troubled princess. She didn’t live in a cult-like family who forced her to work on scrapyards.

Gornick went on walks around the block, talking with her mom.

So ordinary.

But like she says in her writing craft book, it’s not the situation that matters, it’s the story. Fierce Attachments is about the mother daughter bond, and the struggle for independence.

Memoir’s like Gornick’s remind us that life is still valid if you’re living an unexceptional one. It’s the details that make our lives special. The common, ordinary moments.

The small situations are where we dig down deep and find our stories.

Selling my boring life

Some writers tap into click-bait “confessional” tales to sell their stories, but you need to be wary of the tell-all. Personal storytelling isn’t about confessing your deepest darkest moments —or the hot affair you had with your boss.

As a writer, you need to guard your heart (especially at the start of your writing career).

The relatable stories do just as well, if not better, than racy confessionals.

I’ve made my living predominately from personal essays for 15 years even though my life is far from exciting or racy. Slowly recovering, and eventually getting Crohn’s Disease into remission, allowed me the space and time to discover the stories within any situation.

Often our inner lives (and other people’s inner lives) are far more interesting and relatable to readers and editors than what we do. If you can find the inner conflict in a situation — whether that’s climbing Mt Everest or making dinner for your kids — then you have a potentially sellable story.

Finding the hidden story

Inner conflict is where we find the emotion for our stories, and emotional connection is what readers really care about. It’s what editors want to buy.

I’ve sold stories about:

• being a helicopter parent,

• a pregnancy scare after 40,

• and going to the doctor for a mammogram.

• I’ve even sold essays about friendship in adulthood

• and worrying about weight gain in menopause.

All fairly ordinary things. Things many of us could write about.

There’s a lot of story in what other everyday people think about and worry about too. If you don’t want to share your own story, look at common fears, joys, curiosities, and preoccupations.

If you are sharing your story, remember it’s just a lens to talk about a bigger issue: an example of something your readers are also wrestling over.

• A fear of screwing up the kids

• Worries about health and finances

• Current events that are confusing, interesting, or puzzling.

• Navigating the sometimes lonely world of friendship as an adult

• Facing change, ageing, new life stages, unexpected surprises…

Don’t worry if your life is boring or unexceptional. There’s still a lot of story hiding in those everyday situations.

Some might go viral. Some of them might even change the world.

What are your thoughts? I’d love to hear.