On Writing in Public

There’s something uncomfortable about publishing your thoughts for strangers to read. The moment you hit publish, you’re no longer just thinking — you’re claiming something. You’re saying: this is what I believe, at least right now.

I started writing publicly in 2015, when I self-published my first short story collection. The experience was terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure. Nobody read it — at least nobody I didn’t personally tell about it — but the act of making something public changed how I thought about my own ideas.

The filter of permanence

There’s a particular kind of clarity that comes from writing something you intend to publish. Thoughts that seem profound in your head often look embarrassingly half-formed when you write them down and read them back. The act of writing doesn’t just record thinking — it creates thinking.

When I write for myself in a notebook, I’m generous. I let ideas be vague, feelings be imprecise. But when I write for readers — even hypothetical ones — I have to commit to meaning something.

This isn’t about perfectionism. It’s about the filter of imagining another person’s confusion. What would someone who doesn’t know my context think of this sentence? That question sharpens everything.

What I got wrong

For a long time, I thought the goal of writing publicly was to be right. To say smart things and have people acknowledge their smartness. This made me write less, because I was afraid of being wrong in public.

What I’ve gradually understood is that the goal is closer to being useful — or at minimum, being honest. Wrong ideas written sincerely are more valuable to a reader than correct ideas written defensively.

The internet is full of people performing confidence. The more interesting thing, I think, is to be genuinely uncertain in public — to think out loud in a way that invites others to think with you.

The rhythm of it

Writing consistently is harder than writing well. Most of what I’ve published has been produced in short bursts of motivation that I couldn’t sustain. The newsletter I run, Breaking the Flow, is the first writing habit I’ve maintained for more than a few months.

What works, I’ve found, is lowering the stakes for yourself while raising the stakes for the reader. The post doesn’t have to be great — but it does have to be honest and it does have to mean something.

I’m still figuring out what that balance looks like. But I think that’s fine. Writing in public is not a destination. It’s a practice.