Substack beginner: to make my writing useful

I'm in the big end of the funnel of creative choices

The text is about writing. The video is about my love of public land.

I’ve been a writer since I was ten, and in college I majored in fiction writing — which also involved a lot of nonfiction writing. I’ve had jobs that involved technical writing. I’ve had lots of continuing education in writing and I know how to give and receive useful feedback. Between 2000 and 2005 I had a Movable Type blog on the local outdoors and one on my fitness journey — started in 2001, it may have been one of the earliest fitness blogs.

Doesn’t matter. I deleted both of those blogs after around 2007, when it got expensive to maintain them and my posting had slowed down because of a career change. I wish I had kept them going, because with the explosion of blogs and social media they might have helped me raise my profile with more confidence.

When I started writing a memoir in 2018 and created my Wordpress blog, though, the internet was/is a really different world than the blogosphere of the early 2000s. I found (I find) myself second guessing everything I want(ed) to write. If I was wrong about something, in today’s ecosystem, there’s no patience, only pedantry and smackdowns.

Is that only my inner critic talking? I think that fear is based on the problems with social media. Because in fact, on my Wordpress blog, I haven’t experienced the pedantry and smackdowns of social media. Substack, based on stacks that I read, doesn’t seem full of that problem either, though it feels (with its high-profile writers and its recommendations) like a bigger canvas and a more public one than Wordpress.

That’s inviting and inspiring, in a way, but also feels very challenging. I want to contribute posts that are useful to readers, but my writing, even my best writing, is personal and full of interiority. Can that be useful?

I’ve read that what’s most personal and specific is also what’s most universal. It’s a concept from psychologist Carl Rogers, applied to writing via the encouragement not to gloss over difficult material in your art. I keep this in mind. I love the revelation of the specific, the feeling seen, in good essays and memoir. I appreciate the permission to challenge myself to share, in my writing, what I have long omitted in the assumption that my unique experiences are not interesting.

Maybe because of that long omission, I have trouble recognizing that phenomenon (the specific is universal) in my own writing. I’m not sure when I can say “this is very personal but I believe it will resonate with certain people.” How do I know what is “specific and universal” and what is “too many details about one’s own life”?

I have to remind myself that “useful” doesn’t always have to mean absolutely electrifying. If I think my posts have to galvanize readers, then it’s no wonder it’s a challenge to post at all. I do think useful personal writing includes entertainment value, relatable experiences or feelings, and small discoveries. Furthermore, “universal” is an overstatement. I want/expect my experiences to resonate with “more than only myself and my family.” Not with everyone.

So I guess I have to just keep posting and learn what readers like. I don’t have to birth a full-fledged professional-quality blog with my first two posts.

Attached is a narrated video from a beautiful place in Missouri that I love.