The Thing About Content

A much belated introduction.

I have forgotten how to write about myself.

Which is a problem when I'm starting a post like this, which is meant to be an introduction.

I knew how to do it once. Twenty years ago, I shared my thoughts and activities across various platforms — Diary X and LiveJournal, for the most part, and then my own blog — and whether I was scribbling an update to friends about what chaos my kids were up to, composing a descriptive roadtrip retrospective, or thinking critically about creativity and fantasy literature, I could easily spin out 500 hundred or a 1,000 words that were about me, my work, my life.

But then I got lucky and started writing for a living.

I always wanted to be a writer, but in my head growing up that only meant fiction writer, and maybe screenwriter and/or playwright. I knew there were journalists and copywriters, too, but neither of those paths really appealed to me. What I didn't know, back in my early post-college years, was how many other ways there were to make a living using words, though I doubt "business communications" would have held much appeal at that point either. So I worked as a sales clerk, a dry cleaner, an office assistant, while I fiddled around with words in my free time.¹ I even started my own ezine back when nobody knew what that meant.

Then the internet exploded and with it came the demand for content.

That ezine² was enough of a credential to win me my first official job as a writer, working for a major computer manufacturer at the peak of the Dot Com era. I wrote helpful articles for their website (pre-blogs!) about things like how to connect to your printer and what monitor resolution means. I wrote an article about search engines and mentioned Google as a "promising newcomer."

Since then, I have gone on to write  content for many different companies and publications about many different topics. Some of them were things I had fun writing about (photography, home decor, craft trends), while others were less exciting (air conditioners, rehab). I have probably written hundreds of thousands of words of content for my employers and clients, and while I have gotten better and better at writing content (and gotten better jobs with more interesting things to write about), I have gotten worse and worse writing about myself.

The problem, I think, is that I keep trying to turn my personal writing into "content," and that's where the process starts to break down. Content is a marketing tool. It's function is to drive readers to a website so that the website can try to sell them something. If the website is a publication, then what it is selling is related content, paid for with reader eyeballs on advertisements that pepper every page.

Over the years, I have absorbed all the rules about writing content — answer the questions people are asking, craft a clickable headline, keep the copy bite-sized and digestible, don't forget the call to action³ — and sure enough they seeped into my more personal writing. Not accidentally. If I wanted people to actually read what I wrote, then I had to compete with all the other content sources demanding readers' attention, and that meant following those rules. Especially when, as in more recent years, I was writing with the intent of selling something more than my words.⁴

Spoiler alert: none of these content pieces were ever written.

I had a whole content plan organized, article ideas, social media posts, I made graphics to accompany topics like "Why You Should Join a Critique Group" and "How to Write Surprise" and "10 Places to Find Fantasy Inspiration Online" (listicles, amiright) and I worked at it irregularly for a couple months before I became utterly bored with the whole thing and just sort of stopped. None of that content was interesting to me except in the most superficial way, and I didn't see the point in driving myself to write things that didn't excite me. I mean, I do that at my 9-to-5 already, but at least I get paid by the hour for that.

Which brings me to Substack. (Whew! Are you even still here reading? I said upfront that I forgot how to write about myself and this wordy ramble I think proves it.)

I joined Substack last winter, along with a lot of other people when the social media landscape was shaken up and the movement towards owning your own content started catching on. I wanted to start a newsletter, and Substack lured me away from the other services with its promise of, yes, potential monetization, but more so by the promise of community with other writers and readers. Something that fell closer to the journaling platforms I remembered from the past, a place where you could write about what mattered to you for people interested in the same thing, without having to shout about it on social media just so someone might notice it (something increasingly hard thanks to the algorithms). 

I knew what I wanted to write about: magic and ink and all the way those two thinks intersect in my life and my work. Those two words have been swirling around in my head for a few years now. It was what I named my blog when I had to rebuild my website in 2020, and it seemed a natural fit for the Substack, too. I started publishing Forest of Distraction pretty quickly — an easy lift⁵ more content curation than content creation. But I want to do more.

It's just been really hard to get started, and I think it's because my content writer brain was still trying to do things strategically. If you look at the current "about" page⁶ you can see that I was thinking very outwardly, trying to shape the things I want to write about into something that is useful and valuable to other readers and writers.

But writing for other people has never been what I found satisfying and valuable about this kind of writing. Writing content is always about YOU — the reader — and what YOU need and what YOU should do and what YOU might find interesting.

But the kind of writing I've been craving is writing about ME.

Sure, I could try to position myself as some kind of expert on creativity or writing or fantasy literature , though there are plenty of people far more qualified in all these areas. I'm just trying to figure these things out for myself and writing is part of my process for doing that. So I have been working on detaching myself from that part of my brain that wants to only post "useful content" (the kind that talks about YOU) and realigning my writing brain to produce that kind of posts that I find meaningful to ME.

I have been rambling on a long time now, but I felt I needed to set some expectations for what’s to come on this newsletter, since people keep subscribing (thank you!!). To spare those of you have stuck it out, here’s a quick sum up of what this means for this newsletter:

1. Forest of Distraction posts will continue, just not as frequently as they did the first half of this year (but more frequently than they did over the summer). I'm going to aim for two times a month.

2. At least once a month, there will be some piece of writing of my own. The topics will be generally about fantasy writing and creativity and all that stuff, but I don't have a plan for exactly what. It'll be a surprise. For all of us. We're on a journey, and there’s no map!

3. If you only want Forest of Distraction posts or you only want the more personal rambles, go into your settings from the main Magic & Ink page and toggle your selection so you don't get notifications of what you don't want to see. It's easy!

4. I'm going to be turning on subscriptions in a little bit but all my posts will continue to be free. I just have a theory that Substack probably preferences stacks that have paid subs turned on in search results, because they are just trying to make a living, right? Please don't feel like you need to pay for a subscription at all, ESPECIALLY IF YOU KNOW ME. I can't take that kind of pressure.

I don't have a good sign off for this post, but I hope you won't hold it against me. As I said I’ve lost the knack for this kind of writing so it will take a bit to get back in the swing of reaching a good conclusion. I’ve recently reposted some old pieces that I’m still proud of on my blog which will hopefully give a better idea of what I’m striving for here. Take a peek, if you’re so minded!

• My, Myself & the Audience

• A Pirate is a Pirate, or Maybe a Tiger

• Music Lessons

I hope to “see” you next time I post. Until then!

1. My inability to complete any fiction I write is different thread in the tapestry of my life.

2. Phantastes: The Online Journal for Fantasy Criticism, or The Fantasy Writer's Guide, depending on how erudite I was feeling.

3. Don’t use footnotes.

4. My editorial services.

5. Most of the time. This summer has been rough.

6. For posterity, because at some point I'll be changing it up: "The more I study about the craft of writing fantasy, the more I want to share what I I have learned with other writers and lovers of fantasy. From practical advice on the nuts and bolts of writing to facing the challenges of writers block, from exploring rich veins of inspiration to tapping your inner creative genius, my goal is to encourage magic and ink flow across the page."