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I’ve Stopped Giving a Damn What Readers Think

Michelle Lee-Ann
3 min readJun 24, 2020

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Madly, really, and truly.

Photo by Philippe Oursel on Unsplash

Holy fucking doodles, my friends. It took me a loonnnnnng time walking down a winding path in Writer’s Land to get here, but I’m here. Sort of. Mainly. Most of the way, for sure.

I’ve always been a writer in the sense that I’ve always written. Shocking view of being a writer, I know. A lot of my writing is tucked away in journals and word documents that will never be published. I’m okay with that because not everything is meant to be published. Not everything is meant to make you money or become your side hustle.

Some of my writing has been published by websites, under my name or ghostwritten. I’ve traipsed through the seas of content mills and freelance writing (the latter I still do). I’ve written for fucking pennies, thinking this would be the way to the top. I’ve written boring pieces that took me hours to complete because the topics were so painstakingly awful. When you’re getting paid, that’s one thing, but when you’re writing for yourself, for your readers, well fuck me, it sucks.

Those never-seeing-the-light-of-day pieces? Some are pretty good. I enjoy them, I get fired up about them, I feel something when I read them. But, rarely will I write — and publish — like that. Because it’s not what readers want.

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Michelle Lee-Ann
Michelle Lee-Ann

Written by Michelle Lee-Ann

Recently published kid's book author, lover of all things Karl Lagerfeld, Golden Girls enthusiast, and finds happiness in books from Hemingway to Harlequin.

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