I'm un-niching myself

The snow is melting outside. The sun is staying up until almost 5PM. And the Great Tits have started their bisyllabic song, (ti-few, ti-few, ti-few...) Spring is in the air. 😌

Apart from taking walks outside and getting as much sun on my face as possible, I'm painting abstract watercolors paintings, and making a course about it. Last week was filming week, my least favorite part of making videos. I ended up having to take an extra filming day on Friday. (Thats why there wasn't a weekly letter last Friday. Sorry...🙄)

I've spent this week rough-editing the course, watching myself mess up the same lines twelve times in a row. On average. On Monday morning, I was actually feeling excited about editing. It had been a while since last time. A few days later, I was seeing Adobe Premiere timelines in my dreams. And now, I'm bored sick of hearing my own voice and seeing my own face. I long for silence, and empty text documents.

Back in 2019, I was writing essays over on Medium. It was an experiment, to see if I could maybe earn a little bit of income that way. A lot of other writers seemed to be.

I didn't earn much, of course. Maybe around $15 a month when I was publishing the most. I was only on Medium for about 6 months before getting burnt out and disillusioned. But despite of that, Medium sparked a kind of writerly revival for me. On Medium, as on YouTube, you don't have to pick a niche. You can just as easily get known for your voice, your point of view, your stories, and your particular way of writings about things. Any one of your articles could break through on its own merit.

This felt very refreshing to me, after many years of being indoctrinated by experts to pick a niche - the smaller, the better - and then become THE voice of that niche. And, like a machine, churn out 3000-word articles on that topic, week after week, so that the Google gods would send me some traffic. This was how the blogging world worked back in the days. But somewhere around this time, things had started to change. There were new avenues, like Medium, where good writing had a chance to get discovered, regardless of the writer's previous credits or SEO score. And so a lot of us started publishing there.

I wrote everything I felt compelled to write: from writing- and business advice, to personal essays about how moving to the countryside had saved my life, and why me and my partner had decided to not sleep in the same bed. Some of those essays got a lot of applause. (That's what the "like button" was called on Medium.)

I felt validated. I felt prolific. It was the same thrill as back in 2012, when I first got started as a freelance writer for magazines: a feeling of running free on the vast meadows of curiosity and creativity. And even getting PAID for it. Just barely. Or at least hypothetically. (Let’s not be greedy.)

Writing on the patio during the first summer in our new house.

Today, Medium is probably one of the worst places for a writer to be. At least if you're just starting out. If you ever want to feel really invisible and de-valued, due to, I don't know, some kind of masochistic urge, I encourage you to give Medium a try. It would give you lots of pleasure. For everyone else though: stay away from it. There are, thankfully, much better platforms for your words.

But I still remember the joy and inspiration I felt at Medium in the beginning, and I long to experience it again. I want to feel wild and free. Unbound by niche or brand. Able to go anywhere and write anything.

I've subscribed to a lot of Substacks lately. I realized the other night that I could go to my favorite Substackers and see everything they're subscribed to, kind of like on Instagram. This opened up the floodgates and I found so many new and exciting voices to follow. Some of whom almost felt like lost soulmates. I’ve bookmarked upwards of thirty articles that I plan to binge-read over the weekend. (How I've missed that from the old blogging days!)

This, too, has poured gasoline on the fire of my writerly inspiration and ambition. And that is why I will be broadening the scope of my Substack going forward. Even though it terrifies me. Even though I know that some of you will drop off, because I might occasionally write about something that doesn't interest you, or doesn't directly apply to you. And like the people pleaser I am, I'm tempted to apologize beforehand.

But the truth is, I'm not a niched person. I never have been. I've spent my entire career battling against my multi-passionate nature by forcefully compartmentalizing myself. Trying desperately to stay "on brand" and "on topic". Even though I've always known that I'm at my very best when I get to roam free and just be myself.

And now, there's Substack. For the first time in many years, writing online feels possible, and worthwhile, and maybe even profitable. Maybe. Hypothetically. So you know what? I'm going to allow myself the luxury of ignoring niches, and hashtags, and SEO, and all of the other stupid hoops I've had to jump through to get read. I'm once again going to let myself write about exactly what I want to write about. I'm going to have fun. I'm going to try to be the very best writer I can be.

I hope you'll stay, and that you'll enjoy it. That part, I don't have any control over. (And I've heard that you're not supposed to have anxiety over things you can't control...)

My new course will be out next week, hopefully. And after that, I plan to run and dance and pirouette my way through text documents like Julie Andrews in the hills of Austria.

With love,

Things I like right now:

• The Millenium trilogy, by Stieg Larsson. I just started the second book, The Girl Who Played With Fire. Haven’t read these since they came out, and find that I appreciate them even more this time around. And feel even more devastated that he’s no longer with us.

• Christy Anne Jones’s video, where she tries Neil Gaiman's writing routine:

• One of my favorite online creatives, Olive Trees + Moon, have started a Substack! Cat is a folk herbalist, knitter, gardener, artist and writer who’s life I love to drool over. I encourage you to do the same.

• How can I have missed Emma Gannon? Why hasn’t anyone informed me that she exists? I’m deeply disappointed. I have gone so many years without this kindred soul, and her writings, in my life. Now I need to desperately make up for lost time, by reading and listening to everything she’s ever published.

• This podcast, and in particular this episode with Rebecca Gilbin and Cory Doctorow (two of my new heroes), is the most fun I’ve had with this depressing topic lately.