I began writing technical pieces more seriously about four years ago. Medium was on the rise and I joined a company that encouraged writing technical pieces, and it began - the journey towards not writing. Why?
So why did I slow down/stop? The pressure.
The pressure of having ~500 followers on Medium and the self-imposed expectation of continuing to write awesome articles. I began to see this as being a geek-likewhore of sorts and I began to resent it. Starting a new article usually began with joy and a desire to share some newfound insight, to provide an alternative point-of-view. This quickly turned into self-doubt (common thoughts: "anyone who put in enough thought would be able to discover this for themselves too", "somebody has already written on this, am I wasting my time?", "it's never going to outdo your most famous pieces"), and then into fear ("what if this story sucked?", "what if I can't hit the same applause as my previous articles?"), effectively bringing my writing to a halt.
To be honest, I haven't exactly found a remedy to all that self-doubt, but I do get feedback now and then on having helped people to understand certain concepts which is heartening and makes me want to write again. So I'm going to do just that here on dev.to. No followers, no likes, I'll start again from fresh, writing a little each day on my thoughts and reflections about technology creation and stuff related to it.
If you're reading till this far, thanks for reading!
Top comments (2)
There is a great writer who said that you shouldn't not do something solely based on what you've previously done. Which could help you here, because you're fighting with this issue that you'll never write a better article than you already have.
Well what if you forget about the past? Would writing that article make you happy? Would you learn something from writing that article? Would you gain something from it? If you can answer any of these with "yes", you have a great article in the making!
You mention you feel pressure from all these followers reading your posts. The steps you're taking now: no followers at all, starting over. It's a great idea! You should write for yourself. You should get something out of your posts. If you keep that mindset, you will never feel the pressure again (in the same extend). You write for yourself and the nice side effect is that others might benefit from it as well, but you're the most important one.
Any way, welcome to the community! I'm looking forward to reading your posts. Don't be too tough on yourself, take care of yourself!
Thanks Roelof! That means a lot(: