on writing for yourself in public

content/post/2023/11/on-writing-for-yourself-in-public.md

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+---
+title: "On Writing For Yourself In Public"
+date: 2023-11-06T10:00:00+01:00
+categories:
+  - braindump
+tags:
+  - writing
+  - blogging
+---
+
+I've had an interesting conversation with [Mr Creosote](https://dosgame.club/@mr_creosote) at Mastodon a few months ago that lingered in the cavernous debts of my subconsciousness until another related thought dragged it back up. Mr Creosote is the founder of [The Good Old Days](https://www.goodolddays.net/), a befriended retro game review website that---and this is the beginning of the problem---gets almost no views. 
+
+The Good Old Days has been around [in various shapes and forms since 2000](https://www.goodolddays.net/article/id%2C-11/): it is no stranger to text-based internet publishing, and yet, according to Mr Creosote, nowadays, almost nobody cares. One of the major causes could very much be the shift towards video game reviews on a certain singular huge hosted platform. The decline in visits caused the following question to pop up:
+
+> Why write if nobody reads it? 
+
+Why bother keeping a site up in the air when it is clear that the majority moved on? Who are we still writing for, then? The obvious answer is _for yourself_. Or is it?
+
+My own retro game website [Jefklak's Codex](https://jefklakscodex.com) has also [been around for a long time](https://jefklakscodex.com/about/) in one way or another---since 2001, to be exact. In that time span, it morphed into many different things: a personal game news and review site, an amateurish Flemish game news site, a wiki focusing on guides, and a retro game log webpage. It never attracted a lot of visitors, and it still doesn't: around 600 visits a month, of which the vast majority is just there for one specific guide I wrote more than a decade ago. Writing about games won't win much attention if you cannot match the quality and quantity that professional gaming journalists manage to put out. 
+
+Instead, you can look into the more obscure topics that might earn some search engine hits. But as soon as you're thinking that way, you start going down the "attention economy" path. Why not write about the stuff that interests _you_? You're the one who's playing these games and solidifying thoughts about them. In essence, you're your own most devoted reader. If someone else happens to find your stuff and likes it: great! If not: who cares! Writing should be fun, not work.
+
+I now approach my own _Codex_ as a personal game log that summarizes my experience with the games and acts as a historical time capsule. I like [scrolling though the play list](https://jefklakscodex.com/games/) and nobody will enjoy this as much as I do as these experiences (or "reviews" or "game logs" or whatever you want to call them) are deeply personal. I sometimes forget what I thought of a certain game. Now, I can look it up on my own site and share it with friends if we happen to be discussing that particular game. I have zero interest in generating more "views" or "visits" or whatever you want to call them. 
+
+But I would be lying if I said I don't care about my _Brain Baking_ readers. Here, I write both for myself and for others. Sometimes for the former, sometimes for the latter, most of the times for both at once. I'll try to come up with a few examples that hopefully clarify this. Below are sets of articles that I either write for myself (👤) or for others (👥):
+
+- 👤 More philosophical thought experiments start out as a few scribbles in my notebook and become a bit more fleshed out on _Brain Baking_. These might lead to other ideas that have to be fermented in my brain. Others don't have the context to do so.
+- 👥 The monthly favorite overview posts are mainly there to share interesting links I already saved and read myself.
+- 👥 A more elaborate piece on something I find interesting gets published to entice others to join in on the fun.
+- 👥 Shorter summaries of my academic research or books are here to help promote and distribute my work.
+- 👤 Summarizing howto's are here for my future self to find them, but they might also interest you 👥.
+- 👤 Silly retro hardware reports and photos are here because I like to keep track of and document these projects, but I know a few of you enjoy these as well 👥. 
+
+Judging from the feedback I get from readers, any of these sets is enjoyed by at least someone. On _Brain Baking_, I think I never fully write for myself, but never fully write for others either. It takes a deliberate action to press the publish button: private thoughts stay comfortably within the private analog journal. I also very much enjoy the occasional conversation that comes out of these posts, even though that rarely happens (and never does for _Jefklak's Codex_).
+
+Writing in public with low monthly visitor counts has the additional benefit of daring to experiment in absence of pressure. Not that I'd completely change the way I approach writing on these sites if they would rack in the $1.5 million of revenue that _The Pragmatic Engineer_ does. I am sometimes surprised that my posts end up on bigger aggregate news sites like Hacker News, but I'm never actively fishing for that. More often than not, the superficial reactions on these sites indicate that's not my desired audience at all. I prefer one email from an acquaintance commenting on a piece over a thousand Hacker News reactions.
+
+But yes, I admit: I still prefer _one_ mail over no mail at all. As Henrik Karlsson writes, _a blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and [make them route interesting stuff to your inbox](https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/search-query)_. I still prefer writing in public, thereby hopefully positively influencing my little community the same way as my little community influences me.
+
+Others approach writing in public differently. For example, Julia Evans' [tactics for writing in public](https://jvns.ca/blog/2023/08/07/tactics-for-writing-in-public/) can act as advice for very technical howto-like writers. These do not align with how I envision the act of _brain baking_, but these might make much more sense than the rubbish you're currently reading.