14 Comments
User's avatar
The Life Path Won | Founder's avatar

Oh my gosh, literally, what is the deal with chat? 5 months in and I am just now realizing direct messages are separate but under the same button. What do we do with the chat? 🤷🏾‍♀️

Can you tell I didn't read the entire thing before commenting? 🤷🏾‍♀️ The answer is probably there.

Tanveer Salim's avatar

Sincerely appreciate how you break down how to grow on Substack step-by-step. It really is helpful for computer nerds like myself.

Fi Bengtsson🌺's avatar

Hi Derek I see the Draft Dr prompt is written in short lines and spaces. I know very little about AI and want to shamelessly use it better as a tool (not to write, that's the fun bit). Are the individual lines/ spaces important? Can the robot interpret it the same way of presented in a para?

Derek Hughes's avatar

Hi Fi - the format doesn’t really matter to AI. It can easily read anything!

John Dickinson's avatar

Thanks, Derek. Especially about not trying to outsmart the algorithm 🤚🤚 (guilty as charged)

Frank Sadiq's avatar

Great lessons! I was using some already! Thank you for the post 👍

Monica Dubay's avatar

Thank you so much for these lessons— it takes courage to keep going and growing.

Derek Hughes's avatar

Courage is exactly the right word, and it's one most people in the writing advice world tend to skip past.

The tactical stuff, the headlines, the hooks, the posting schedules, that's the easy part to write about. But you can do all of it correctly and still find yourself staring at a blank page wondering if it matters. That part doesn't go away as you grow. You just get better at not letting it stop you.

What's the thing that's asked the most of you lately?

Mason Powell's avatar

This was really helpful. Thank you!

Working Smarter with AI's avatar

Thank you. Great advises.

Felicia Frances's avatar

I loved this list! Thank you for the inspiration

Gehan "G" Haridy-Ardanowski's avatar

An enthusiastic “restack” here 👍👏 thanks for helping us wade through the overwhelm!

Sarah Wooster's avatar

I really appreciate your generosity in sharing so much that is helpful Derek ❤️

Derek Hughes's avatar

"Generosity" is not a word I always associate with what I do here, so it genuinely landed.

I think a lot of writing advice online is designed to keep people slightly dependent on the next piece of advice, always one more tip away from the breakthrough. What I've been trying to do instead is give people the whole thing, the reasoning, the failures, the actual system, and trust that they'll figure out the rest themselves. That feels more honest than drip-feeding insight.

The fact that you're writing about therapy and showing up here suggests you already understand something about what it means to do hard things in public.