I’m sure you’ve seen the ads. Between social media and some newsletters I subscribe to probably a dozen of them hit my inbox this week.
- Learn Indie Author Secrets
- The Secrets To Being A 6-Figure Author
- Your First $1000
Courses like that are literally a dime a dozen, but usually the people teaching them have large followings and position themselves as publishing gurus. “If I can do this, then so can you,” the ads proclaim all the while they contain a little asterisk staying “results not guaranteed”.
First of all, there are no secrets. Authors work with words on a daily basis and we talk–a lot. For every class teaching you the “secrets” there are probably a thousand or more people in Facebook groups or on social media following writing-related hashtags who are ready to tell you what’s already in those courses. And they’ll share. For Free.
What Big Names (BNs) Don’t Want You To Know:
There are two real solid facts that most BN course teachers don’t want you to know, and it’s the same thing that most business and entrepreneur coaches don’t want you to know.
Any systems that are taught in a class only worked for the person teaching the class and those who think/act like them.
It’s true. And considering the infinite diversity of humans, not to mention neurotypes, living conditions, supportive (or not) people around them, then it’s also not surprising that a lot of people will spend a lot money on classes and not get those results.
A great example is when I tell people I’m an author, and when they ask how many books I’ve written, I’ve shrug and say, “I don’t know. There’s over 200 on my Amazon dashboard.” Obviously they’re like “wow, that’s a lot of books” so the next question is obvious, “How’d you manage to write so much?”
And there’s no secret, there’s no hidden trick or rapid release program that I’m following. The truth is my career has spanned over 20 years at this point, I type over 100 words per minute based on the last test I took, I don’t have human children, and I have been blessed to have both a supportive partner/spouse and when my mother was alive and needed substantial care, she was also supportive and lived with us, so I could write while she was napping. I also learned how to write a lot of my books a sentence at a time between the calls while working on a busy help desk. Oh, and a lot of my books are in the 20k-40K range because that’s what works for my brain. This is very unique to me, my life, my neurotype. And it’s a lot like the classes that are taught by big names, many of whom come into this business with a background in internet marketing or from an other helpful industry.
Let’s look at a broader example. Handwriting. I think a lot of us would think that there is a system that schools use to teach handwriting. But guess what? It doesn’t work for everyone. In fact, it wasn’t until my own ADHD diagnosis and seeing it talked about on social media that how I hold the pencil is very indicative of a neurodivergent brain. And my mix of cursive and print? Oh that’s classic ADHD. (This is a brief but good overview of the subject.) I can blame my messing handwriting on typing much more than I write (though grocery lists are on a legal pad, not a spiral notebook, and written out by hand 2 weeks at a time), but it’s also more likely my ADHD. And when you think that a good number of children who go through school and learn to write are nerutypical, our handwriting is still never the same.
If you have a neurodivergent brain or chronic illness/disability, those instructors never meant you anyway.
Here’s the kicker. There’s a very high likelihood that if you have a neurodivergent brain or chronic illness/disability, those instructors never meant you anyway. And if you do have a neurodivergient brain, or they do, there’s a good chance that what you’re learning contains an awful lot of masking. When you make unmasking a large portion of how you present to the world, because I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of “instagram fake” personalities. We are messy creatures, and it’s good that we see each other as diverse, messy, raw, and beautiful.
Until those teaching courses and charging hundreds of dollars start to acknowledge their identities and their intersectionality (or lack thereof), nothing will change.
The bottom line is systems only work for those who create them, or those who choose to emulate the people. For some of us, that impossible, and also, that’s okay. Which means, if an instructor is promising you “the secret” to anything without telling you where they’re coming from and being brutally honest (If you don’t have a marketing background this will take much longer for you, etc.) about their identities, their experience, and their intersectionality, then they’re just hoping you’ll pay money and not read between the lines.