Who am I even writing this thing for? I have some ideas, but I feel the need to write them down to see what I really think. So here we go.
A General Audience Interested in Technology, Media, and Writing
My impulse is to say I’m writing for a general audience with an interest in technology, media, and writing. I think that’s mostly true, but practically, it’s not really how I’m writing things here, where “things” means blog posts. My short stories are definitely written with a general audience in mind.
I know I’m currently using too much industry jargon and assume too often that people reading my site are computer nerds like me or writers interested in writing about technology. If I’m going to welcome a more general audience to this site, I need to get better at tweaking my writing for that audience. I’ve got a longer piece I’m working on that I’m beginning to tweak with this audience in mind.
Let’s see how that piece turns out.
Documenting the Journey
I’m also writing this post because I want to do more thinking out loud with my audience here. I wrote previously about my goal of writing 1000 words a day. I also want to be transparent about this goal of building an audience and documenting my process. The best sites online let readers into the lives of the person behind the site. I’ve been blogging or maintaining my own personal site off and on for 20 years now. I’ve never really tried to build an audience or a relationship with that audience. I’d like to take a stab at that and see how it turns out.
Why?
Well… why not? But more seriously…
I found my way into web development quite by accident, thinking I would use it as a way of sharing my writing online. In the 90s, when I was in college and discovering the web, I was really into reading work posted online from professors I followed. These were people posting their stuff online—there was a term we used for it then before “digital humanities;” anyone remember that term—and I imagined a similar life and work for myself. Then, I got good at web development, it lead to a fulfilling career, and I never regularly put my writing online.
I’ve still been writing the whole time, just for myself. I’ve also worked for a one or two companies that had a focus on writing. And now, another one. It’s a recurring theme in my career!
A couple years ago, I got the itch to go to grad school and find a better way to merge these two passions. Grad school didn’t work out, but the desire to merge these passions never left. I’ve been trying to find a way back to those heady days of the early web for awhile now.
So that’s why.
Maybe I’m too idealistic. I keep thinking if I could really pair this web and writing thing, there could be a real audience for it. That’s why I’m writing so much now and putting so much effort into this site. I'm trying to take the long view this time. Keep writing, keep posting, and keep tweaking this site until it catches on with the audience it was always meant to find.