I Feel Like A Fraud Blogger
This isn’t clickbait.
This is actually how I feel.
Sometimes I read people like Jessica Wildfire and Jeff Goins and I feel like I shouldn’t be publishing words on the internet.
I know I’m pretty good at blogging, but what about writing?
What about the traditional rules of grammar/syntax. What about proofreading?
What about outlining my “points” and making sure those points align with my thesis?
What about writing what I ACTUALLY mean instead of settling for a sentence or word that isn’t exactly accurate?
Sometimes I write articles that suck.
Sometimes I could be a little more polished.
Sometimes the arguments I make don’t hold water.
And this sucks because tens of thousands of people read my words every month. What if I influence them in the wrong way?
Do You Feel This Way, Too?
I was never trained to be a writer.
I never went to school for Journalism or English or anything like that. I sort of picked up writing on a whim 4 years ago when my sister gave me a journal to write in.
8 months later I filled out all 100 pages front and back. It felt great.
But now I’m here amongst actual writers and people that know how to sling sentences like cowboys slinging guns in the wild wild west.
I’m here, and sometimes I have more followers than people that write 10 times better than me.
I built the better half of my following writing about how to grow an audience on Medium — not by writing words that had been on my soul for a while.
Shouldn’t the people that actually know how to write have more followers? Shouldn’t it be more fair here?
I feel like a fraud sometimes, but then I remember something..
There’s No One Way To Write
The written word is an art form — that means there’s no limits to how we can use it.
I stumbled into blogging and started posting a shit ton of content two years ago. I became a blogger at the Huffington Post two years before I gained one follower here on Medium.
I was a much worse writer back then who wrote a lot differently than I do now. But somehow I got in to the Huffington freaking Post.
I feel like my writing style can be compared to that of Conor McGregor’s fighting style.
The dude is just unorthodox. Because he’s unorthodox and doing things with his body that nobody has ever seen before, he’s inspiring a whole new wave of people to fight like him.
He’s a true innovator.
I’m not saying I’m some innovator or something, but what I will say is I think that if I did learn how to “properly” write in college, it would have ruined me.
I would’ve seen the blank page as a bunch of lines and rules and “acts” rather than a wild frontier that I got to throw words at just to see what would happen later on.
I’m not saying all great writers see the page this way, I’m simply saying that with MY particular personality — I don’t know — I just enjoy winging it.
I think writers like Jessica Wildfire are absolutely brilliant. I will never be as good as them in the traditional sense, I think.
But I also think it doesn’t need to be a competition.
There isn’t just one finish line. There’s tons of other finish lines in lots of different directions, and all of the people who get there can wave to each other from across the lawn and say
“WOO HOO! I’M A WRITER AND YOU’RE A WRITER, TOO!”
Was that a weird analogy?
Probably.
What I’m trying to say is if you feel like a fraud blogger, don’t.
I have to remind myself that writing is an art form every now and then. I have doubts, too. And I think a small part of me will always wish to be as good as other, more polished writers who actually know what they’re doing and have experience in newsrooms/with magazines/etc. etc.
But I also have to just be happy with myself and what I bring to the table.
I think every writer simply needs to pay respects to everyone from every background who has the courage to publish words on the internet in the first place.
As long as you do that, you’re no fraud in my book.
Want to get started blogging online? I actually have a free 5-day email course called “Your First 1,000 Medium Followers” that will teach you how to build an audience here on Medium! Sign up for it right here. I’d love to teach you a couple things.
