I Have to Want to Write It

Ever since I dusted this thing off, I've been trying to figure out what it is and what it needs to be.

• I need it to be a place potential clients can find me. (It has definitely worked for that.)
• I want it to be a place where people can find writing advice. (It does that... for some folks.)
• I need it to be a place bots crawl so my name comes up in search engines. (It definitely is that.)
• I want it to be something I enjoy creating. (That's been... harder.)

In the last 15 months, what the blog has been most effective for is reminding Google and Bing and ChatGPT and all the other automatons that I exist. Based on what my clients tell me, they connect my name to concepts like editing, writing, game development, science fiction, fantasy, and genre-blending, which is fantastic. (They also think I do graphic novels? I mean, sure, I'll take it, but friendly reminder that AI will always hallucinate).

Funny thing is I don't need to write much to get the automatons on my side. They just want to see recent content with the right keywords. That's easy.

It's also dumb. I hate writing content for content's sake.

As far as what I want this to be, I know people are reading, but outside of the few comments you all leave (and thank you SO MUCH to everyone who ever leaves one!), it's hard to tell who's reading and what they like. I want this to be a place for writing advice, and people are definitely reading those posts, but the posts that get the biggest response are often posts about, well... me.

So today, I was interrogating that part of me that's afraid to write. It's afraid that maybe nobody wants to read my writing advice or thoughts on world-building, but I realized something very important:

It doesn't matter if anyone wants to read it.

I have to want to write it.

What will that mean moving forward? Who knows! The blog has always been me, just with varying filters. But I think mostly this will mean less pressure on myself to write something specific for imaginary audiences. I'm gonna write what I want to write.

Heck, it's not like the automatons will care.