By Karen
As a text worker, it's been six years now, and I've been engaged in personal writing for five of those years.
Many people think that my journey into personal writing is "ahead of schedule," planning ahead for myself. However, the truth is, I started writing simply because "reality was too tragic, with nowhere to speak about it, so I could only do it online." Unexpectedly, these tragic accounts resonated with many netizens, giving me "confidence."
Reflecting on it, confidence is just "confidence," and whether it can actually gain social and market recognition remains a long distance away.
Perhaps due to the practical experience accumulated from "non-fictional writing," when working in the news media industry, there were time pressures, article quotas, and click KPIs. I'm the type of person who becomes extremely obsessed once a KPI is set, and will stick to my convictions even in the face of others' dislike and hatred—someone who could be described as both loved and hated at work.
When working in the media industry, the daily output for breaking news was 7 articles or more, each approximately 500 to 700 words. For feature reporting, daily output would be around 2 articles of 2,000 words each. Of course, news has its own discipline—the day before, you must "pitch your stories," outlining what you plan to write and explaining who you'll interview as news sources, or having already conducted the interviews so you can start writing the next day.
Mature text workers don't need reminders; they basically possess unique perspectives. Companies also track daily topics and themes, so the content being written is constantly adjusting.
After all this high-pressure production, returning to real life, when I put pen to paper, I would never pursue KPIs, nor do I want to manage whether I have any particular perspective or organize dry content—things like how many articles to write daily, how many per week, how much traffic to reach monthly, or how many knowledge points each article should have, etc.
I'm not sure if this kind of real-life laziness has actually created a "knowledge anxiety" in me?
Starting from early last year, I observed many people beginning to write. The reasons for my writing are quite different from theirs. Of course, strategic writing isn't wrong either, but when writing becomes a "means," doesn't it delegitimize the benefits that "content influence" itself brings?
The benefits I refer to are: once you have influence, transmitting the "correct" perspectives, "correct" research, "correct" market evolution, and "correct" tested experiments to others, so that others can gain something—a gain that can influence someone's entire life. Therefore, protecting the value of your own expertise and story is such an important thing.
But recently, this flood of writing seems to be stuck in a phase of "style building," using words to tell others "I'm this kind of person," "I live this kind of life," but will empty rhetoric and stacked achievements become good fruit or bad fruit?
I really admire the "cross-disciplinary creators," a group of people who truly want to write and have passion for writing. They don't pursue speed or immediate visibility, but are willing to calm down, carefully refine their content production perspectives from details, improve their personal expression abilities and communication methods, and maintain their own pace. When stuck, they can seek help together without having to work in silence waiting to be noticed.
Mutual encouragement among cross-disciplinary creators
These creators are characterized by having high standards and requirements for themselves, expecting their each output to show improvement, possessing self-aware learning, and accompanying each other.
Perhaps because of the modern fast pace, most people have forgotten that meticulous quality of pursuing a small thing done well. In fact, quality creates style, style creates reputation, reputation creates volume, and volume creates influence. The result is the same, but different processes also affect how content receivers think.
Can your production really guarantee it's correct and has a point of view?
If you're not passionate about writing but passionate about "building a temple for yourself," then conversely, hasn't the reader receiving the knowledge been sacrificed?
Regarding cross-disciplinary: https://lin.ee/K6qmDmw
