The Emotional Toll of Crafting Beautiful Prose: Is It Worth It?
Why I Had to Abandon My Artistic Dreams and Embrace a New Path
Introduction: Setting the Tone vs Writing for the Audience
Intense, soulful, and poetry-like pieces. These were all I set out to write when I decided to embark on my writing journey on Medium.
I wanted my words remembered, bookmarked, and used at various points in people’s lives.
I wanted to strike hard and make an impact.
As I did more and more research into how to reach a wider audience and about SEOs, niches, and a whole bunch of content creator’s jargon, I discovered to my dismay the kind of writing I set out to create was the least sought after and rewarding in terms of audience and reads.
The Importance of Providing Value
While such work makes for stirring reads, it brings with it its drawbacks. If you need an audience, you need to be producing value for the audience.
Solve problems and create awareness of useful life tips which they never knew existed.
An article titled ‘5 ways to spruce up your writing skills’ is way more likely to give your audience takeaways, ideas they can put to use in their daily lives and improve than an article titled ‘Goodbye my Love’.
The Emotional Toll of Soulful Writing
One more negative point I’d like to point out is the emotional toll it takes on you when you finish a piece of soulful and deep work of writing. It saps your emotional bandwidth and required painstaking effort.
More effort, less reward.
While my initial thought was to ‘move’ people, my ultimate goal was always to reach a wide audience and make my presence felt on the internet, and be known as a content creator, however small an impact I may be making.
“The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” — Steve Jobs
Self-Defeating Niche: The Hard Truth
My niche sadly is self-defeating for my purposes and I have decided to move forward and explore new ones and settle on a few when I get my zing going.
I will still be producing the occasional stirring and deep pieces straight from my heart’s private corners but the numbers would be less and I’d be striving for acceptance, a higher validation among the internet community.
Being someone involved with the field of Chartered Accountancy for close to a decade now, personal finance is the niche that is an automatic choice, and would be easy for me to produce piece after piece of good work like one well-oiled content mill.
But the thrill is in the chase and not the game itself, isn’t it?
I refuse to be trapped in one niche, particularly personal finance and I’d like to get out of my comfort zone and really test myself.
I have some ideas in mind and the very prospect of stepping into territories I’m yet to chart gives me the butterflies.
The Oldest and Strongest Emotion of Mankind is Fear and the Oldest and Strongest fear is Fear of the Unknown.
I’ve expressed in my earlier piece how much writing means to me and the kind of role literature plays in my life.
Exploring New Niches: A Step-by-Step Guide
I’ve never really had to worry about finding topics, ideas, and the actual substance of the content earlier as they all came straight from my heart and already existed, always existed.
Now that I plan to find truly worthwhile stuff that people can incorporate into their daily lives or stuff that can make it easier to achieve their goals, I now have to always be on my heels hunting for ideas and tools.
I have always wanted to be a writer of some form and this moment of change might be a step in the wrong direction, or if fate/God be willing, the best decision I’ve made as far as writing is concerned. The anxiety will fade once I’ve received some feedback from my treasured audience and the content will begin rolling.
Here’s how I plan to explore new niches:
- Starting by brainstorming: Finding Inspiration.
- Researching popular niches: Discovering my Audience
- Experimenting: Testing the waters.
- Seeking feedback from my supportive audience: Engaging.
- Being open-minded: Embracing new Ideas.
- Continuing to learn: Growing as a writer.
Conclusion:
In the pursuit of artistic expression, we often grapple with the emotional toll that comes with crafting beautiful prose. It takes courage to bare our souls and put our deepest thoughts and emotions out there for the world to see. But is it worth it? The answer to that question lies in our individual goals and aspirations. While some may find fulfillment in creating soulful and poetic pieces, others may seek validation and recognition from a wider audience.
As writers, we must strike a balance between personal expression and providing value to our readers. We must cater to their needs, solve their problems, and offer useful insights that they can apply to their daily lives. This requires us to be flexible and adaptable in our writing, exploring new niches and experimenting with different styles and formats.
The road ahead may be challenging, but it is also exhilarating. We must be open-minded, embrace new ideas, and continue to learn and grow as writers. For at the end of the day, the true reward lies not in the number of reads or the size of our audience, but in the joy and satisfaction, we derive from the act of creation itself.
