My on/off relationship with maintaining a blog is back on. But this time it’s personal.
No more cross-selling or clickbait. No more size specific headings, bullets, numbering, and short paragraphs tailored to the two minute attention span. No more stock photos. This time, the ads are off and consumer-driven content is quelched.
Frankly, I just don’t enjoy reading most of what gets written for a target audience. I also don’t like writing for a target audience because that process installs a kind of automatic editor in your brain – one that makes it really difficult to hear your own authentic writer’s voice.
Original, authentic narrative perspective matters profoundly. Without it, meaning gets lost and so does any chance at achieving anything approaching art.
After years of writing that way, and as I reflect on my body of published writing, I realize I only shared the polite parts of my creativity.
That distortive practice of formulaic writing had a dehumanizing, dysmorphic effect on me as a writer. And sometimes I can barely see myself in the things I write.
For a long time, I fooled myself into believing that I was still uniquely expressing some part of me even through that very narrowed target audience lens.
But my true writers voice was always out of reach.
Photos from:
- Chateau La Coste, France
- Rania Bar, Washington DC
- Lacoste, France
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