The First Post Sickness: Why starting a blog is so daunting
This is the first installment of Write & Muse: an ongoing article anthology of my reflective pieces on the craft, the industry, and the writer's life. Find latest articles below:Article 2: Quit mindlessly reading writing tips. Here’s what to do instead
It took me 2 years and 3 months to write this first sentence.
In retrospect, it should never have taken that much hesitation: I’ve been writing articles, short stories and poetry for about a decade and blogging was right up my alley. I’ve grown up with this whirring world obsessed with bite-sized infotainment — to produce an article, then, is a no-brainer.
So, why did the first step feel like a mountain to climb?
This was the question that set me moving forward: I like to think. I like to ask. I like to seek answers, one sentence at a time.
And in a world where we all chase answers, why didn’t I start sooner?
The void: not being seen is terrifying
This article probably won’t reach anyone.
That realization is nerve-wrecking, gut-wrenching, and heartbreaking all at the same time. As I type this, the feeling of my words being abandoned at the bottom of my profile is weighing down on me: it starts slow, and then drags you to hell.
Let’s face it: we all want to be seen. To be heard. But like how we spent 9 months alone and in a void before opening our eyes to this world, our words will also have to gestate in an abyss. But it is an uncertain road; some might never make it out. Some might fade away before you can ever put pen to paper and some would fizzle out the moment you hit ‘Publish’.
To be seen, then, becomes a game of roulette.
And the notion of luck terrifies me. It’s unpredictable — no statistical evidence, no charted experiences, and no linear progressions to show us what exactly luck is. The adage of ‘the harder you work, the luckier you get’ also seem to degrade in front of my eyes with every other passing day: this is the era of Instagram influencers and get-rick-quick schemes.
No wonder it’s so daunting. But something else horrifies me too.
Failure.
With a combination of intense researching and crazy-pacing across my room, I successfully made myself scared of failure. What an irony.
Let’s start with out trusty statistics: there is about 1,385,000 new articles posted on Medium every month. There are 60 million active users on the platform. Ignoring every other factor and performing high school mathematics averages us about 43.3 views on an article.
Problem is, that is far, far, far from the truth.
There are so many factors that can influence this number that one can’t make enough sense of it, ever.
Is your writing good enough to capture attention?
Does your blogging niche appeal to a large audience? Or are you blogging about extinct plant species that only your cousin Bob would read out of familial obligation?
What time are you posting? How long is the read time for your article? Have you sold your newborn to the devil? Are you already famous on other social media sites and Medium blogging is just your side quest?
Yada yada.
I tried answering those questions in my head and realized that I’ll be the only one probably reading my blogs, with my cousin Bob thrown in for good measure. All of it, in the end, boiled down to this: oh freak I’m gonna get nowhere. I’m gonna fail. Dead end.
What I didn’t realize is that when you’re beginning out, there is no dead ends to the long road ahead. Sure, it’s deserted at first, but you’ll find your way to the populated city one fine day.
Not getting there yet doesn’t mean that you’ve failed. You simply have a lot more to cover.
And that’s true for me too. Because I know I need to cover a ton as I take on this new endeavor.
Getting over the First Post Sickness
2 years, 3 months, 7 days. That’s exactly how long my First Post Sickness lasted.
How did I calculate? I traced back to the first day where I had written down on my journal: start a Medium blog. As I write this, it’s the 8th of September, 2021— but the urge to write had started back in the 30th of June, 2019.
And what did I do all that damn time? Oh, a lot. It’s called creating profiles, then abandoning them, then creating profiles, then googling things, then writing a few words, then deciding to quit.
Then returning.
And then quitting.
And then returning again — this time, for good.
My first few drafts were wildly different: it ranged from politics to writing tips — and I was panicking. I didn’t know my audience or niche, I am definitely not popular on social media, and researching just sent me into spirals of confusions.
And after going through the 7th draft of my first blog post, I decided to write exactly about that: I dubbed it First Post Sickness, and journaled about it for a few days.
And voila, here I am.
This is probably what I’ll be doing for the rest of my time here.
Besides being an International Relations student, writer, poet, and armchair philosophic, I’m prone to exploring self-improvement and development.
And what better way to improve than to ask questions?
This is the foundation of my belief: every story, every sentence, and every word is borne from a question. Be it a fictional piece, a memoir, or a politics essay due in two days (oh crap…), the world’s backbone to curiosity and learning is asking questions.
It’s the only way we move forward. It’s the only way I moved forward: I asked myself why I couldn’t, and it opened up so many doors that I knew never were there.
So, the first question I asked myself here was: Why didn’t I write?
But I think there’s another question that begets that.
Why do I write? A question that scares and excites at the same time
If you’re a writer like me, you would definitely have encountered this question.
“Why do you write?”
It’s the final boss of all the other questions: who do you write for & what do you write can be answered with a little bit of introspection of your branding & audience. But why?
Oh boy.
I’ve never really found anyone who could answer that completely: though those who have been in the game for a long time have given convincing answers, it still feels… incomplete. As if your subconscious knew that the missing piece to that puzzle was in you, somewhere, but to pluck it out and place it in words would make it incomplete — again. A cycle that’s inevitable.
So why do I write? I’ve tried to answer it — not just for days, not just for months, but for years on end. Seeking this holy grail sent me places: I’ve written poems, short stories, novels, articles, argumentative pieces, and I still… don’t know.
And not knowing is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced. And it is still the most terrifying things I’m experiencing.
So, I’m here again: to write again, in the form of blogs.
And maybe that’s the thrill of it all — the answer to that question is to just write, write, and write. Pour out your thoughts like fuel to fire up that passion, chasing the gold at the end of the rainbow.
Because when someone asks me to describe my writing in one word, I say: me. My writing is me.
And in the era where we all chase to know what ‘me’ means, I just took the road of words.
That’s why the whole question that was posed has changed for me: asking why do I write is akin to asking why I exist.
And the answer to the latter becomes simpler: I exist to write. And I write to exist.
Mittu Ravi writes poetry, short stories, and opiniated essays on the writing life and industry. Find more of their work and their socials here.
