People who write, but who are on the fence about publishing.
Once you decide to claim the freedom to write for the fun of it, to challenge yourself, or simply for the learning experience; once you choose topics that don’t seem to be on anyone else’s mind (at least not anyone you personally know); once you feel like writing about whatever it is that tickles your fancy regardless of whether anyone else shares the same priorities; and once you decide to ignore all the fear bubbling up while you’re contemplating a rather paralyzing amount of self-doubt and go ahead and publish anyway…you are very probably going to hear crickets in conjunction with alienating a few readers. Don’t worry about that. Those few who stick around will make all the difference. Even if it’s just a single person. And if you’re still skeptical…just send it to me. I’ll take the time to read it and, if you so desire, to share my thoughts. Because I read as much as a write…and often times even a little more.
With that in mind, you should know that I usually don’t mention my own writings to anyone I don’t personally know. And even then, I must really dislike the person to consider telling them that I’ve published something new. In a way, we could say that I treat my public stuff a bit like a Venus flytrap: it’s just there, inconspicuously dwelling on the web, and whenever there’s a potential reader getting closer…snap! Poor sucker! And I’m referring to myself here. That’s because those who know me don’t hold back when it comes to letting me know that I’m letting them down. Let me give you a few examples…
One of my last pieces, Finding Purpose, prompted some of the following reactions:
- thoughts seem to resemble an inner monologue excluding the reader
- difficult to find a common thread between the sections
- expected some advice, but was left with even more questions
- felt like climbing a mountain to end up feeling rather underwhelmed at the top
And here’s a bunch of examples for Awareness:
- had to stop reading after a while because couldn’t make head nor tail of it anymore
- will this piece get further updates
- congratulations on completing your website
Finally, my favorite example for a privately published conceptual breakdown of a piece of software and how to use it:
Well, this is probably useful, but I gotta be honest with you…twenty pages? I am never going to read this.
Taking all of that to (my now bleeding) heart, it should go without saying that I am going to stop my written escapades, pack my stuff and close this website for good! Clearly, I should consider something else. Something I don’t completely suck at. Tough one! I’m already running out of ideas. And another door’s just closed: anything requiring creativity can be excluded as well, I suppose…and yet, how come that I am still writing?
You see, while all of the above feedback is real, the people giving me that feedback had more to say than that. And not everything was so brutal either. But there’s something more amazing to me: those with the harshest words were also those who put the most effort into the reading and understanding. They wanted to get something out of my words and they were ready to question themselves in order to give me the benefit of the doubt. In case of Finding Purpose, some had read it at least twice and others spent an hour or more discussing it with me. If you ask me, that’s nuts! I mean, don’t get me wrong…wow! That’s a level of dedication I didn’t expect! So the least I can do is to take them seriously — no matter how soul-crushing their feedback.