If you write to please others, you are selling out. You are in the process of audience capture. This way of talking, which is how the fear in me talks, is common—as if writing for an audience and writing for yourself are at odds with each other. I really used to feel like that.

But I no longer think that it is quite right. The relationship between... See more

“One of the hardest things about starting a creative practice publicly is that your only audience is the people you know in real life. Beyond actually doing the work itself, this is the first big hurdle. Often those people are hugely supportive—some will be your biggest fans—but often times they aren’t, and there are covert ways people try to put... See more

I had this obscure fear of putting myself out there, and I began to feel that it was holding me back—from getting people to read my work, of course, but potentially also from even writing in the first place. I had somehow internalized this idea that to seek attention, to seek an audience was craven and base; if I did so, I was debasing the pure and... See more