In this era of Substack and Medium and every conceivable lit magazine out there, I spend a lot of time wondering, “what’s the fucking point?” Why write at all, when there’s so much of it out there? The era of the internet means everyone is a writer, and while not everyone is a good writer, everyone feels entitled to put their work out there. Writing should be democratic, after all.
But as writing becomes ever-more commodified, this enshittification of writing has me looking around at my contemporaries and having second thoughts on this whole endeavor.
What’s the goal, anyway? To make money? To get attention? To process some long-held insecurity about not getting enough love as a child? None really feel like my reasons.
I started writing at a young age, encouraged by both teachers and my parents. I would race home from school to write in my LiveJournal about the minutiae of my day with such urgency. Looking back, it reads like something Gawker would’ve published, full of real names and banal, catty details. It was the dawn of the second decade of the internet and I wasn’t sure how this newfound reach could or should be used.
I took composition in high school and excelled. I wrote and wrote, again encouraged by my teachers. Senior year, we crafted one essay each week in AP Lit, and those essays were formative to my style. I’ve made a living from cutting and carving and cleaving the writing of others, yet I’ve spent the last fifteen years thinking that I am, underneath it all, a writer.
…because I can’t conceive of doing anything else. At this point, I doubt I could do much else. I’m terrible at compromising, working with others, and keeping a schedule. I’ve lived alone and worked for myself for so long now that I doubt I can pull off a relationship, let alone a “real job.”
Yet I have strong and lasting hesitations about writing. I’ve watched—and participated in—the rise of the internet since the late 90s. uJournal, LiveJournal, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter… I’ve played around with all. I watch how these platforms corrupt and destroy. Social media makes people petty and rude and brash in ways they’d never be in real life, and it’s corroded the social fabric. (It has done some good, too, but that’s another post.) Discourse and connection has been so thoroughly commodified that people no longer seem to remember the Before Times.
I write because I love the challenge. The goal is the same as therapy or mediation or solitude or exploration. To write is to think, to learn to think in new ways. To write is to uncover the truth, both internal and external.
It’s here where I’m cowed into silence. I see how people react when you write truthfully. Write honestly about a sports team or economic model or favorite actor and people, well, those that don’t agree don’t handle it well. Not in the era of the internet.
This seems especially true in America. We are a unique kind of unhinged: individualistic, tightly wound, very litigious. Being honest here will inevitably piss someone off, and they will have no compunctions doing whatever they can to make my life hell.
This is why I choose to write anonymously.
The opposite, though, must be true: to be a writer, you must be able to hear the truth from others. If I’m honest with you, dear reader, I don’t know that I’ve wanted to be honest with myself thus far. I’ve had a quiet little life, and the older I grow the more I want it to stay that way. All it takes is one post to become the internet’s Main Character and your life is turned upside down.
Yet what I aim to do here is be honest with you: as honest with you as I know how. And to be as honest with myself, for better and worse. I have a lot to say, but I’m just looking for a little courage to say it.
So stay tuned, be gentle, and let’s go exploring.