Everything I write is trash
Henrik Karlsson writes about being blocked in his writing from feeling pressured to live up to the expectations of his large audience at Escaping Flatland—pressure from the desire to keep the interest of the people who provide his livelihood, but also the pull towards audience capture, towards continuously recapitulating the ideas that excite his readers rather than him.
The solution he found was to start an anonymous blog in which he could try out new perspectives and personas. With the only expectation being a self-imposed one to get words on paper, he was able to disregard the pressures he felt at the main blog and get ideas out more freely. He calls it his trash blog.
I'm already anonymous. I don't have an audience (I think I have literally 0 subscribers at the time of writing). I make my livelihood in other ways. And yet, I still find myself blocked by the desire to represent myself well through my writing. And, perhaps like Henrik, this has prevented me from writing a number of pieces that I would love to have written—pieces where the ideas now feel old and tired because my excitement for them has passed.
The irony is that, in not writing more often, my ability to write well atrophies. So it's time I treated this like a trash blog. To set expectations for myself, here is what I plan:
They're to be thought of as "pieces", not "essays"— viz. "incomplete part", not "determined attempt"
More frequent writing (2+ pieces / mo)
Shorter pieces, similar to or shorter than this one
Only two rounds of editing allowed
And that's it! Trash here we come.