Excuse me, have you seen my plot?
A year ago, I preached about storytelling being my saving grace, and then I abandoned it entirely.
Imagine a sofa, dark cyan, Midcentury Modern inspired with blocky walnut legs. It’s 3:47 a.m. and a restless body tosses and turns, fighting through insomnia, and trying not to wake the entire house with coughing expectorating the gelatinous post-nasal drip.
It’s me; I’m the body on the sofa suffering through the worst head cold I’ve had in a year or more. Sleep evades me, and instead of fighting my way through it and risk waking my wife, I leave the comfort of my bed and banish myself to the couch.
I’m still not sleeping, but I am thinking, and as I drift from one random thought to the next, I remembered something. I came back to writing just a few weeks ago, and yet I’ve completely forgotten what I’m doing with it.
I haven’t told a decent story in months.
The best I’ve managed are lame anecdotes and almost cliché self-realizations (I might be on one right now).
There’s a phrase I can’t get out of my head from master storyteller, Matthew Dicks. “Good stories have stakes.” he says, and it’s been the pervasive thought around everything I write for over a year now, except I lost touch with that feeling, and I’m not sure I know how to get it back.
What sort of literary pickle can I get myself into, and drag the reader in with me, so that we can emerge from the darkness together? What is at stake for anyone reading this post?
My recent few posts had nothing at stake other than being worried you may have given up on me for abandoning the craft for so many months. You didn’t, and I thank you, but now what’s at stake?
Unfortunately, I cannot deliver on a promise I haven’t made yet; one that provides an adequate balance of risk vs. reward to the reader while still allowing me to satisfy my prosaic inclinations.
Have I forgotten how to write my own story arc…
Left Turn
Have you ever joined a platform, perhaps paid the monthly or annual fee, realized it was more complicated that you anticipated, and then given up?
You’re not alone.
The other day, while working through an issue on my Shopify store, I had this moment of clarity that if I wasn’t the stubborn bastard that I am, not having the tenacity to see this problem through, I might have given up.
Then I thought about all the people who don’t push through in those scenarios, who brute force their way through platform because they don’t know any better, but never dig deeper. They miss opportunities to make their lives easier for fear of being overwhelmed by the technology.
I don’t know the number, but I know the names of several who have quit because they felt intimidated by the platform.
Shopify is an e-commerce beast that provides so much potential for people selling their wares, but without guidance, some throw up their hands and lean into what’s easy, even if it’s the long way around the problem.
With a wild hair tickling my posterior, I posed this question to the group…
My initial instinct was to separate this idea from what I’m doing here on Manual Transmission because what would people think if I turned this into a technical guide for Shopify when subscribers expect me to wax poetic about creative energy?
The truth is, I’ve struggled to find a voice for any of that stuff lately. I can’t put my finger on it, but the words won’t come. Perhaps it’s because I need momentum in order for the squeeze loose the the good prose, but I’ve struggled to find the stories.
On the other hand, I can talk about Shopify and all the third-party tools I’m using to build and grow my online business. At the same time, by sharing my insights on those tools, I’ll find the momentum I need.
The Promise I Can Make
I’m building a thing, and I’m figuring it out in real time—the platforms, the tools, the workarounds, the mistakes, and I’m dragging you along for it; not as a tech manual, but the way I’d tell a friend over coffee what I’ve learned so they don’t have to suffer through the same pitfalls I did.
You can expect the occasional dive into Shopify: What works, what doesn’t, and what the internet won’t tell you until you’ve already wasted three hours searching YouTube only to have some dude in a thick Eurasian accent tell you the wrong way to do things.
I’ll talk about the third-party apps worth paying for, the ones to skip, and the shortcuts that actually save time instead of creating more problems than they solve.
And if Matthew Dicks is right about stakes (he is), then building this shop in public (and all the uncertainty that comes with it) ought to qualify.
So the question remains, what is something about building and selling on Shopify that mystifies you?
I heard this song shortly after reading this post. It was “One Step Up” by Bruce Springsteen.
One step up , two steps back is the chorus line.
I think everyone feels the same about difficulties. For me, I stopped writing altogether on SS because I feel my writing is down-right bad. I wanted to keep going, re-reading Mathew’s book again but my task to always create my art 1st, let alone website transformation. I look forward to more of what you have to say about Shopify. It’s great that you share so much all the time. Maybe, you will be helping folks get 2 steps forward.