Nicolas Cole argues that creators should build for themselves first. When you make work that clarifies your thinking and improves your craft, the internet finds an audience naturally. Creating to satisfy external expectations is the trap that kills real impact.
A really important skill to build is being able to discern in yourself between, "Am I trying to create something just for the sake of creating it, or am I creating something that I genuinely would find value in and I think other people would find value in?" This is such an easy thing to hear and logically understand, but it's a very hard thing to emotionally execute on for a long period of time. I feel very strongly that the most important metric in all of writing and all of creating anything on the internet is that you are building a library of things that you valuable. I think where so many people go wrong is they stay in a constant state of trying to create things for the sake of creating it, or they try to create things because they think that's what someone else wants. And where you create the most value is when you are building a library of things that you're like, "This helped clarify my thinking. This helped me get better at my craft. This helped me improve my systems. This made me more efficient." Because if you're successful in doing that for yourself, the internet is very good at going, "Now let's go find 10,000 people that are just like you."
What Every Writer Gets Wrong About Their Audience #writing #creator #writingtips
