Learning in public is messy business
Coping with improving in front of a live audience
While writing the initial draft of my first post, I went into detail about the challenges I faced utilizing the tools that I used to write it. It clearly meant a lot to me to make a great impression. The pressure that built up led to a wall-hit with the process I had cultivated.
Well, it turns out that the issue wasn't the tools I chose, but the fact that my writing ability had declined over the years.
Clawing my way back
Reading and writing poetry in high school and early college was critical to developing a sharper eye and literary mindset about my writing. Periods where I engaged with literature broadly were always the periods where my writing ability peaked. There's an open mind to influence from better writers that is hard to replicate without disciplined effort. Being young has its advantages, and one of them being better instincts about what works when it does.
The advantage I have now is taking complete ownership of the challenges I have to face, and thus having the capacity to keep my skin in the game, no matter what is thrown my way. I may not be able to have what I had, but I can have much more. I recently came across the writer and software developer Swapnil Chauhan who, like me, stepped away from writing for some time and had to relearn the importance of consistency:
“Recently, with a bit of encouragement from a friend, I’ve started to break out of that mindset. I know that the only way to get better at writing is to actually write. So my plan is simple: write often, read more, and slowly improve until I reach a point where I can be proud of my work.”
Many writers I’ve been discovering all come to the same conclusion: Just Write.
An Exercise in Learning In Public
This Substack can't help but be an example of Learning In Public. This means that every post under this theme carries a risk of failing in public and thus introduces even more vulnerability to the writing process.
Questions I'll constantly be asking myself:
"Is this post good enough?"
"Am I saying too much?"
"Will people think I'm indecisive, inconsistent, and/or incompetent?"
Many people will gladly answer those questions for me, and I'm sure it will vary in quality and usefulness. Every post is thus an experiment as long as it's in LIP mode.
This is also an opportunity to throw all of my interests and approaches to writing on the wall to see what sticks. I'm not going to act as if I'm above building an audience with intent. Whatever gets the greatest response ensures that I'm providing something of value to others. Nate Silver really helped me to drop the burden on perfect consistency:
“Being in somebody’s inbox several times a week is an intimate thing. You’re letting people into your thought process. So, if you’re thinking, “I know I’m a movie reviewer, but this pizza story is really great,” I’d follow your instinct. (If I were subscribing to your newsletter, I’d want to read the pizza story.) This is one of the joys of being independent. If the New York Times’s movie reviewer wants to review pizza, they will have to jump through a million hoops to do it. I strongly advise maintaining a high quality threshold — especially when venturing off-topic — but otherwise, trust your process.”
It's easy to suppress the urge to write about many, wide and varied topics. I'm at a point now where I can see how damaging that fear is. The only way to truly survive in this space is to let as much of it out as possible. Not everything, of course, it's healthy to maintain a private space for writing, but I have so much more to give than what a narrow lane 'brand' affords me. I'm not clueless about the benefits of that, but it takes more bravery to stay the course.
This is not an issue as long as I'm creating things I have a passion for. Most of all, I hope my lessons can be useful for any new writers that are on the fence about making a Substack.
Many other Substack writers have been coming to the same conclusion. From writer Max Read:
“What most successful Substacks offer to subscribers is less a series of discrete and self-supporting pieces of writing--or, for that matter, a specific and tightly delimited subject or concept--and more a particular attitude or perspective, a set of passions and interests, and even an ongoing process of “thinking through,” to which subscribers are invited. This means you have to be pretty comfortable having a strong voice, offering relatively strong opinions, and just generally “being the main character” in your writing.”
Learning in public is messy business, but it's also a way to ensure that I actually publish what I write. With it comes an embrace of imperfection that reduces the degree of mediocrity often associated with generic, purely SEO optimized blogging (there's a place for that, and it's called LinkedIn).
Carving a path to greater independence, one post at a time
The goal of becoming a full-time writer, able to answer to oneself, is worth the grind of building an audience on Substack. It's an extremely difficult path without having a pre-existing audience. It's worthwhile because in order to stand out, it requires a degree of authenticity that is lacking on most major platforms. I like knowing that there is in fact an audience somewhere that could find value in my writing.
Most social media has always been biased towards visual content. This focus is what chilled my desires to contribute to a public online space for many years. I ultimately thrive in text driven spaces more than visual ones. I also thrive most in text driven spaces that aren't poisoned by attention jacking its users for ad dollars. It's one of the many reasons I will always be fond of pre-2010s online communities. It was easy to take for granted that I actually had people in a community that would read and engage with my DBZ fan fiction. Getting to such a place for writing that isn't as easily identifiable will understandably take time.
Substack is just one of many tools, but as a writer, it presents a platform for the kind of writing that many communities won't give a fuck about. Any site that allows discovery to allow a writer on the more esoteric side to find a voice is a win.