Writing Anyway: Before the Niche (+ Spiders)

At the core of the agony of multi-passionate niching is the fear of picking the wrong thing, an inauthentic path, that will lead us to hollow writing and another soulless livelihood.

The solution, generally, after you read 10 thousand “finding your niche” essays, is to keep building anyway. Keep writing. You’ll look back and see it in hindsight.

Fair enough.

But what do you write about in the meantime? How do you preserve authenticity and hone in on the truth when you haven’t made it yet?

How do you decide where to build your niche, your great project, your written quest so you land in a place you want to be?

Spiders

My favorite story from Ovid’s Metamorphoses is Arachne.

She was a great weaver, who challenged Athena to a weaving contest by saying how great SHE was at her craft, with no thanks to the gods.

When the day of the contest came, Athena wove images of the god’s power.

But Arachne wove a beautiful condemnation of their injustices, the god’s abuses against humanity.

Both were beautiful. But Athena got pissed off and turned Arachne into a spider.

So.

There’s a lot we could pull out of this, but I think the most relevant to niching and authenticity is the fear that, if you say the true, good, honest thing inside you – you’ll be turned into a spider.

You’ll be condemned to be someone no one likes.

Or worse – who no one reads.

Spiders, Weavers, and Writers

Symbolically speaking – spiders are much like writers. They weave webs together line by line. And something insignificant at first becomes something strong and complex enough to build a livelihood out of.

Druidry links spiders with the origins of writing and language – much like the famous spider Charlotte cleverly wove words into her web to save her friend Wilbur, the pig.

Many webs will be broken or lost, but the spider has to keep spinning, and so the writer has to keep writing.

Likewise, spiders (and writers) are weavers, building thread by thread something that is ultimately much greater than the sum of its parts. And like a niche – the image in weaving looks like nothing until it is at least partly woven already.

You have to build first.

But like I tell the spiders hopelessly weaving webs in my closet, there’s no food in there.

The niching-writer’s job is also to weave a web near a good source of readers, so they can cultivate the attention that is the writer’s life-blood.

Niches, Trust, and Expectations

Letting readers into your world means build trust. And your niche is the first tool of that trust.

It’s like a Halloween-themed door mat, that lets strangers know you’re weird and potentially dressed as a giant chicken.

It sets the expectations, of who you are and what you do, so you don’t terrify or confuse them later.

But seeing yourself well enough to decide what you authentically will be dressed as, when you are going to be playing yourself, is absurdly hard.

And often we can’t see it until we have made enough things, written the web out long enough, that we can see it in hindsight.

Writing In the Meantime, While You Don’t Know Your Niche

So the question becomes, what do we write about, authentically, in the meantime, as we slowly weave our niche into existence?

And that in part means writing each piece TOWARDS something. A mission, a goal, a trajectory, a belief about how the world should be.

In art, when you make a “collection”, you aim for a consistency not only of style and color, but also of felt sense. A mood. An ambience.

Maybe THIS is what we can build a niche towards, when we have only raw ingredients and the mandate to keep writing.

1. A felt sense – of who you are, where you want to go, and how you want to feel when you get there. An emotional trajectory. A reaching towards something.

2. A consistent mode of travel – certain lenses, practices, and tools you return to over and over to process each idea through.

3. A consistent belief, claim, or value about how the world should be – to be a sea anchor that keeps you from bouncing around too much on the waves.

Eventually, you are supposed to crown these with a one liner, an elevator line, a “what I write about is _______”.

But while you’re living into that, you have a homing beacon to steer each essay towards.

Writing from Your Soul

So we have an aim of what to write about. But when you sit down to write, you need something more – an idea that comes from somewhere deep and true – authenticity.

For many of us, absolutely me included, writing is interesting in the first place because it lets us get the things in our souls out somewhere. The whole project is an act of deep authenticity.

And that’s why any niching advice that seems to eclipse that authenticity is so painful.

If you want to write ONLY from your soul, I say absolutely go for it. Your soul probably needs some fresh air, and I admire your courage.

I want to write from my soul too.

But I have also spent a lot of my life feeling too weird to be understood. I want to make a nice doormat to make people feel safe.

Which means bridge-building between where people are, what they care about, and what my soul would like to discuss today.

And I need a way to access authenticity on demand.

Where to Find Authenticity on a Thursday Morning

So if we have a sense of what we authentically want to write about, and a set of filters to pour it through (a belief about how the world should be, modes of travel, and a felt sense to arrive at)… we should be golden.

But when you are sitting down to write on a Thursday morning, where do you find authenticity? When you are authentically thinking about how your cat just threw up on the floor?

1. Noticing – There’s a kind of meditation where you just try to notice when your out-breath turns to an in-breath, without controlling it. Just noticing when the tide turns. I think authenticity works best like that – just learning to notice your authentic thoughts as they move through, without controlling them.

2. Unclenching – Meditation, somatic practice, nervous-system safety, walking, yoga, dance – all are great ways to relax your body and mind into the present moment and calm your nervous system down. This also helps the vibe of writing from a clearer emotional place. Great unclenching resource here: (Howtounclench.com)

3. Idea farming – Read books related to your work, read other essayists, listen to podcasts. Then go for walks or do things with your hands to process. Taking in good ideas – and giving yourself time to percolate – is essential to having good things come out.

4. Writing bad – It’s like trying to get something out of a backpack. Whatever you put in last has to come out first. If you have good ideas buried at the bottom, the first step is idea-vomiting whatever is already in there blocking the way. You don’t have to publish it, just let it out.

There’s no guarantee of anything, of course. You could have to take your puking cat to the vet, or you could just write about why he might be puking (so fun).

But that’s how I set the conditions to make something authentic come out.

A Thousand Tiny Decisions to Keep Writing

Ultimately, I think even if Arachne wrote (I mean wove) about 10 Ways Athena Is Awesome, she was still going to be turned into a spider. The gods were going to do what they were going to do.

Hiding who you authentically are is not a guaranteed, lasting, or satisfying solution.

And things (like niching) that seem like one big decision are so often a thousand tiny decisions and course corrections in disguise.

But building towards something you know will only make sense in hindsight is also a confusing place to be.

After reading my 10,000 essays on niching this week, this is what I’ve gotten so far: make space to notice, open-up-to, and explore meaningful ideas… and then write them down, aiming for a felt goal or a belief.

And keep going.

Hopefully this helps you keep writing.

Or you already know what the heck you are doing, or have totally transcended caring (I hope to attain your glory).

-Morgan