I backspaced this title a million times
I backspaced this opening sentence a million times, too. Okay — maybe just ten times. I’ve been writing for a while now, so that feel is familiar to me. Typing something out, realizing it’s stupid halfway, and hitting backspace. Pausing through a half-deleted word, retyping the sentence I just wrote up to a certain point, deciding it’s awful after all and deleting it all the way to the top again.
I’m backspacing because of doubt. (I guess more than anything writing is an exercise in fending off doubt, while steeping in it.)
Why am I saying things on the internet? Do I have anything left to say? Who am I to be saying things on the internet? There are lots of *insert admiring adjective* people who know more than me. The internet is flooded with such people, and also, it’s stressful wanting to be heard.
But I’m interested in giving this a shot, for three reasons:
- I’m curious about Medium as a platform. I’m curious about whether or not the right article at the right time really does give you reach, and grow your audience. I’m curious about what level of consistency, what topics, and what sort of writing voice seems to resonate with people poking Medium. I poke Medium a lot myself, and I’ve found some really great things on here, but the mechanism of that discovery is a bit mysterious to me. As a product professional, I’m really interested in investigating it from the other side.
- I’ve always liked being a voice on the internet. I still think about freeopendiary.com and a specific entry I read on it, where the blogger described how happy she was playing her violin. It was such a simple moment — just a person on the internet (pre-social media, back when you could still technically be anonymous) thinking aloud. I still think about the livejournal communities that helped me become a much better writer. I’m not sure if Medium is a place that can recapture some aspects of those internet-platform-resonant-emotions, but it’s worth a try.
- Although there is so much writing about writing, I still don’t think there are enough easily discoverable resources for a certain type of writer under a certain set of circumstances. The specificity of an experience is important.
I’ll expound a bit on that last point. I believe I’m specifically writing for two sets of people: newer writers who are interested in learning more about short speculative fiction and how that market/community works; and young adults (dare I say…millennials…) who are on a sort of dual life-track where they’re working an intensive day job and pursuing a creative career on the side and wondering wtf am I doing, is what I’m doing even possible?!
I’m not an expert on these topics, but I have actual experience in both (even if it’s just flailing my arms and potatorolling, in which case, maybe we’ll find solidarity). So I’m hoping that in writing about these things with some regularity, I can hopefully provide a little insight. Or make you feel less alone — that would be great, too.
Anyway, that’s it for an intro post. This is me while I’m writing, and I’m looking forward to sharing it with y’all.
