The past couple of weeks I haven't written anything for Odyssey. I've attempted to write some personal pieces that didn't turn out the way I expected them to. I became very discouraged and wanted nothing to do with the medium. It was like my thoughts weren't living up to my own expectations. I've also been very busy and I had to deal with some personal issues that needed to be sorted out. All of that is personal, so let's not bother getting into it. What I really wanted to do was explain myself as to how I've been feeling about writing.
I've wanted to be a writer for a long time. It always interested me and seemed like the most powerful art form there was. It blew my mind that just by writing a sentence in a very specific way, you could make someone feel everything or nothing
. I wanted to learn and become better at making people feel. I was looking to write things that inspired people or that evoked some kind of visceral, emotional response.
Recently, it doesn't feel like I've been doing any of that. I've been writing these boring, clickbait articles that have nothing to do with what I'm passionate about or how I'm feeling. I'm too scared to write about my personal problems because I don't want people to worry about me or to call me crazy. The problem is that I know that that is how you become a good writer. You tell stories about the things you've experienced and you share how you feel with the people who are reading what you have to say. So far, it feels like everything I've written hasn't been very honest.
Not only this, but with this specific platform, you can see how many pageviews your article gets. This is automatically going to contribute to my overthinking of my own writing, but there is a pattern that I've noticed. When I write about something I'm passionate about or write straight from the heart, not a lot of people read it. Opposingly, when I write about something that doesn't particularly matter, everyone reads it. This clickbait obsession is driving me insane. All I can think about recently is how I want nothing to do with it.
I know page views shouldn't matter because either way, people are reading what you have to say. Although, it becomes very frustrating when you feel like you can't write about the things you care about. Its disheartening when you begin to consider, do I really want to be a writer because all you can write about now is how to cut your hair or 8 songs to add to your playlist.
Maybe this makes sense, maybe it does not. All I'm trying to do is explain that I have doubts in myself and in my passions. Sure, a good writer can write about anything. But a great writer overthinks their work until the day that they die and put of writing for months at a time. I guess I need to figure out which one I want to be.
