Enter label: how to keep your voice alive in the age of takes
The 5% commitment with tips from the Art of Memoir by Mary Karr
Dear Companions,
I recently read a Substack piece by
, a well subscribed writer, expressing his battle against his own readership. A point stuck with me: he didn’t want to produce more “takes,” even though those received far more attention. It’s a classic struggle we can all appreciate—the balance between instructive value and artistic integrity.Similarly, my simple guide for dos and don’ts during hardship not only had higher viewership, but I could easily repurpose it for Instagram and Twitter. My pre-online toddler captured this dilemma perfectly as I drove her to class. She told me she didn’t like school because she wasn’t allowed to sing.
How early this struggle begins—the desire to be of value, but also to be free. But! I think I have a solution. I’m calling it the 5% commitment.
5% Commitment
What if we committed just 5% of each piece we write—or any other interaction—to developing our voice, building craft, even in these newsletters?
It can take inspiration from
who wrote an incredibly creative piece about emotional men, or with her heartbreaking piece on loss. It’s always surprising to find that level of discourse here. But that inspiration doesn’t always need to translate into sweeping changes; sometimes, it simply leads to small, intentional additions.5% is just 100 words out of a 2,000-word piece
For example, if I am documenting a fertility journey, I am jotting down the various medications and throngs of people peering into my feminine abode, while clutching my pearls due to the backtrack in recovery it’s causing me. But what of monarchs flittering in my pelvis, before my uterus descends into a volcanic cramp of handshakes wringing its walls, crushing the monarchs out of existence?
That’s 25 words already.
Without the 5% commitment, I may fail to write down the sensations.
5% does not ignore or forget Substack for what it is—a blog that necessarily lands in the emails of busy people’s inboxes seeking nuggets of information. We can’t fight this. Nor should we. We still need to schedule posts, add calls to action, and shape content to grow our audience. But we can reserve a sliver of our creation for the sake of craft—our 5%. It’s the pause to look up at the sky, the extra bangle on your wrist called style. In writing—the voice. You.
Hey, you.
In my desperate scramble to convey my experience thus far, I may fall short of the 5%. There could be four reasons for this:
I’d rather talk in terms of accruing functionality than describe for instance, the lightening in my head
Brain retraining techniques want me to ignore these sensations.
AI is coming, who cares.
I am trying to assert control above all else, and the 5% is a vulnerability
But better writing begs for voice. Slovenly memories that are rotting in the basement couches of our mind benefit from getting exercised. As Mary Karr in the Art of a Memoir suggests (more below), private agonies read deeper than external whammies.
Sure, the 5% requires extra thought—but only a little. It’s like lifting weights once a month or skipping that second brownie… not the first one, y’all! It’s pushing back against the Dead Internet Theory—the idea that most of the internet is bots, not real people—without declaring war on Substack or your own social media.
The 5% rule works precisely because it’s not everything—and yet, like salt on a ribeye, it’s transformational.
Here are 6 ways to help you deliver on the 5%, inspired by The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr—one of the best books on writing I’ve come across in recent memory. It’s arguably a more inspiring guide than Stephen King’s On Writing, which, still a seminal reference, offered the regimented advice I needed in the earlier stages of my journey.
Put your talent/voice at the forefront
Do structure your work so that your unique talent shines through, even in your most instructional pieces. Remember Nabokov who injects feeling into every memory, who “wows” us with his linguistic surface, or Frank McCourt, who speaks simply, with humor and wants us to identify with him.
Don’t underestimate “Youness.”
Provide carnal imagery
Don’t tell—show! Remember that from 9th grade English? People will believe you more when you present physical truths, according to Karr.
Do use simple touches. Consider Robert Lowell who when seeking describe the state of his mother’s aristocratic home, writes of the claw foot furniture having an on tiptoe air. Three simple words to bring the WASP vibes to life.
Don’t just focus on the traumatic observations. As Karr says, simple memories stick too. They can be just as powerful and resonant.
Tell people why you are writing
Do represent a psychic struggle—an exploration of self. Karr uses the example of a passage by George Orwell where he shoots an elephant, symbolizing the conflict between his own moral compass and the colonial system and the local crowd. Of the elephant, he writes: He neither stirred nor fell, but every line of his body had altered. He looked suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralyzed him without knocking him down…
Why else would you be doing this? Internal conflict will deepen any newsletter.
While carnality makes writing good, interiority makes it readable, according to Karr.
Find the nature of your talent
Don’t present as someone you are not. Karr often observed how her students showed themselves exactly opposite from who they actually were—like, the sweet kid would write like a sociopathic hardass. Sometimes, in trying to present a path forward, I present myself as being in control. I’m not.
Do answer the following questions until they are crystal clear:
Who do people like and dislike about you?
How do you want to be perceived in true or false ways?
What verbal signposts do you have that suggest you are posturing?
Write for your niche
Do honesty, even if it seems boring. Remember James Frey, author of the mind-bending A Million Little Pieces? He famously lied about undergoing an unmedicated root canal, along with many other fabricated details. As Karr points out, those lies were completely unnecessary—so much of his true story was already captivating!
Do write for the people in your niche. They will find you inspiring. In my opinion, people lie and embellish to attract people who never went through their particular hardship. These people need to be excited. But the real ones just want to know. This hit home while reading
Leave Society, a book where perhaps not much happens, except feelings and thoughts in his healing journey. So, for me, it was action-packed.
Be dangerous
Do draw inspiration from real people in your life, divulge some secret, or just share a point of view that might be weird.
Do remember you are allowed to think negative thoughts, to share them—without fear of any retribution. At least 5% of it anyway! Men in particular, Karr notes, have no problem referencing family members in their memoirs, whereas women tend to feel a lot of guilt in doing the same, getting multiple sign offs prior to publishing.
Do be Chappell Roan with lipstick smeared on her teeth at NPR’s Tiny Desk performance after her labeled had dropped her. She’s now #1. (For more on her, check out
recent article on Pop’s It Girls).
I hope you see these 6 ideas aren’t just about saving our souls—they can make your writing better, more valued, and more trusted, which are all essential for building an audience.
So, what do you think? Will you commit to it?
Let’s use the 5% to fight against the Dead Internet! To welcome people to the Healingvrse! Please share if you commit to the 5% artist in you!
With much love from the Healingvrse,
Rebecca
Thank you for the mention. I definitely should take the 5% rule to heart a little more myself.
The 5% reminds me of grad school. My professor said he didn’t expect us to solve all of the problems from one essay to another essay but if we at least focused on one, he’d be happy. Bite by bite!