Writers of this generation have been done a great disservice. As wonderful as it is to have these opportunities to monetize and make a living from our words, a valuable art has been lost. Craft that contains the cognitive DNA of the individual writer.

Words are the fingerprints of the soul. It is a culmination of all we’ve experienced and learned. It can be replicated, but it will never be the same. However, we now live in a time where writing advice is about catering to an audience. There are a plethora of rules writers should follow if they ever want to make a career from their writing. Presumably.

What we’ve lost along the way

We’ve been taught to dilute our words to make them more palatable to an audience. When writing, at its core, is about taking our life experiences and making sense of them through words and sharing them with the hope that others feel the same. The question should not be “what does my audience want to hear?”, it should be “what do I have to say that can benefit my audience?”.

Not to say the other approach doesn’t work. It does. But it comes with second-guessing, burnout, and stress because writing went from being a form of authentic self-expression to something that must be done in a certain way. It takes away the comfort of writing and turns it into something that brings dread because it becomes all about the results and numbers.

I struggle with this too. Writing solely because the words in my brain needed to be let out was terrifying. I had no idea what the result was going to be. I was practically just a scribe for my thoughts. When I read back my work, I found myself choking up at some of the things I’ve written.

As someone who struggles with vulnerability in writing I plan to share, I was surprised at how authentic my words came out when I wasn’t hyperaware of what I was going to do with the piece. I just let myself be, and in doing so, I connected to my own words. Connecting to my own words allowed me to better connect with myself because I was faced with the thoughts of my subconscious on paper. It felt like meeting myself for the…