When the algorithm seems to write better than you

We live in strange times.

We can spend months or years writing a novel, weeks polishing a chapter, and hours searching for the exact word for a sentence. That is the normal writing process.

But one day we post a photograph, a fifteen-second video, or a quick thought, and it turns out that it reaches many more people than everything else combined.

And then an uncomfortable doubt arises:

Does what we say matter more, or knowing how to get ourselves seen?

Ever since I started taking social media more seriously as part of my job as a writer, I’ve learned something that I initially found hard to accept: publishing isn’t enough.

Not even publishing something good is enough.

There are schedules, formats, videos, photographs, trends, calls to action, posting frequencies, and a ton of minor decisions that, in theory, help a platform decide that your content deserves to be shown to more people.

And you end up learning words you never thought you’d need to write novels.

• Reach.

• Engagement.

• Retention.

• Impressions.

• Conversion.

Suddenly, it seems the writer also has to be a marketing specialist, content creator, designer, video editor, and digital strategist.

And that’s where the noise begins.

Because it’s one thing to use social media to share your work, and quite another to feel like you’re working for social media.

There are days when I feel like I spend more time thinking about how to tell it than actually writing.

And there’s something absurd about that.

You can spend an entire afternoon preparing a post about historical documentation, character building, or a narrative decision that took you weeks to resolve. You publish it, convinced it will be of interest, and it barely gets a response.

The next day you upload something much simpler and, for some reason you don’t fully understand, it performs much better.

Then you look at the stats.

You try to find an explanation.

Was it the timing?

The format?

The opening hook?

The photo?

Or did the algorithm just decide to be generous that day?

The danger starts when we let those figures enter the creative process.

When we think a topic isn’t interesting because a post had low reach.

When we discard an idea because it didn’t generate comments.

When we start writing by thinking more about how it will be shared than what we want to say.

That is where we need to slow down.

Because the algorithm has a huge advantage over us: it doesn’t need patience.

We do.

A novel takes time.

A reader takes time.

A career as a writer takes a very long time.

However, social media conditions us to expect an immediate response. We post something and, a few minutes later, we’re already checking how many people have seen it. If it works, we feel we got it right. If it doesn’t, we immediately look for what we did wrong.

And we haven’t always done something wrong.

Sometimes a good post goes unnoticed.

Sometimes a good book takes years to find its readers.

Sometimes what deserves to endure isn’t necessarily what knows best how to appear.

I think that is one of the great conflicts for those of us trying to create something right now.

But we also need to protect ourselves from the noise.

We cannot allow a number to decide what is worth writing.

Social media can serve to open a door, but behind that door, there has to be something.

A story. A voice. A book.

Something that still makes sense when the post has disappeared from the feed and the algorithm is already looking for something else to show.

Perhaps the challenge isn’t to beat the algorithm.

Perhaps it’s to use it without ending up writing for it.

Showing up when we can.

But writing to endure.

—Have you ever discovered a book, a movie, or a song long after its release and thought: —How is it possible that I didn’t know about this before?—

Thank you for being there on the other side of the screen.

See you next week.

Antonio de Rosa