I’m writing as my personal self on Instagram again.
As writers, we have an audience — but not all audiences are the same.
When I’m writing to the WordPress community, I come as I am. I always have.
The fact that other people outside of WP can see what I write in my slippers and pyjamas at 4am doesn’t seem to bother me. So — thanks, guys, for that.
Substack feels similar. It’s full of writers and poets. I’m just me writing to another version of me — same species.
Instagram, though — or any mainstream social media — it’s a different beast.
And this week, I tangled with it.
And got bitten.
For the first time in a while as a writer, it made me pause.
Made me roar a little, internally.
Because on Instagram, I have family.
People I might bump into in Woolies.
And I complicated it further by leaving the door wide open —
Everyone who has ever had an axe to grind against me can now wander in, take a seat, and read me.
Why would I do that?
Because a young woman at the Winton Writers’ Festival asked this question:
“How do you write in public? I feel like everyone is watching me.”
I told her,
“Get a blog. Call it something obscure. Just write. No one is watching you as closely as you think.”
And I still believe that’s true.
That’s where you begin — in comfortable obscurity.
If you write from the heart, and you’re sensitive about the echo (as many of us are), you need time to grow your butterfly before the world has a chance to squash it.
You need space to build resilience.
Fiction is easier in this regard (though it has its own challenges — that’s another post).
I think I was talking about Instagram.
Right. It’s different.
But I think I’ve cracked it, for now — comments off, DMs open.
At some point, we all reach a fork in the road:
Are we only writing from the heart because we’ve tricked ourselves into thinking it’s private?
Or have we grown — through the act of daily writing — into someone who can speak clearly, no matter who’s watching?
Because here’s the truth I’ve come to understand:
There is nothing in art that will not transform the person making it.
The closer and deeper you go into the craft, the more aware you become of this.
You might say, at the end of your days,
“I wrote thirty books, a trillion words.”
But if you’ve paid attention,
you’ll know instead:
The words wrote me.
And that — that’s a reason to pay attention to what you’re writing.
Because whether you know it or not,
it is shaping you.
Reveries post on Substack this morning . Much lighter reading 🙂
