Niches: what are we really blogging about?

Words like Trees began two and a half years ago, December of 2018, as a way to build some kind of an online presence for myself and for my writing. I was planning at that time to be applying to MFA programs in the near future, and I was focused on the science-fiction novel I had been writing for ages. Blogs I read talked about a “writer’s platform,” this sort of self-branding, online identity, whose goal is to help me reach people who might read my work, as well as to connect with fellow writers.

I set the blog up. I read a number of posts about how to blog successfully. WordPress tells me I have published 138 posts, this one you are reading being number 139. I’ve never missed a Sunday. That routine is what has kept me going. Here I am again, Sunday August first. It’s time to post.

The blogging advice I read recommended focus on one niche, a specific subject matter that will draw an audience of a specific interest. Possible niches might be knitting or Japanese literature or budget travel or basketball or parenting bilingual children–the idea makes sense, that a person who loves my post on how not to overcook seafood and subscribes to the blog, only to receive in their inbox the following week a post about existential philosophers! What reason would they have for sustained interest? I won’t keep my readership if I don’t keep my niche.

At its slow beginnings, I saw my niche as writing advice. I wrote sundry posts about craft topics like active verbs, about tense, worldbuilding, dialogue, revision, writing marginalized characters as privileged writers, as well as the more human-focused writing topics of habit-forming, goal-setting, perseverance, self-confidence.

But with the time, I drifted. A post or two described my teaching experiences, bread baking, or hikes in the mountains. When traveling, I let the writing fall by the wayside to explore the things that I was seeing. This summer’s posts, I’m sad to say, have been so little about writing that I think I can hear those little blogging-furies approaching, ready to take my right to my niche away with their little talons!

So this tension exists in me between my original purpose, the posts that formed Words Like Trees‘s foundation, and what I find myself writing now. I need to reflect here on these different kinds of posts, what purpose each serves, and what I should work towards going forward.

Reflective, diary-style posts are much easier to write

One of the reasons I recognize I’ve shifted away from deep dives into craft topics has been the work required to do them well. Craft posts require examples, whether literary or original, and they often needed for me substantial research to deepen my own understanding before writing. These posts routinely took me hours; sometimes I did not finish writing before Sunday dinner time, and I had to hurry back after eating to finalize the post to make sure I met my deadline.

The more reporting, reflecting, diary-style posts, by contrast, are faster and come easier. They are based on my own experience, after all, and research that I do for them is usually far less in-depth. The genesis of ideas for these diary-style posts is also far easier. While inspiration for my first several craft posts came easily (of course I can write about character development; of course I should do a drawn-out series of posts on point of view), I rapidly exhausted the obvious topics, especially those about which I had direct knowledge. But simply to write about some new experience I have had, or to reflect on some question lingering in my mind that may have nothing at all to do with writing–those are easier, and the ideas keep coming simply as I live.

Craft posts reach more readers

The flip side is, however, that it is my writing craft posts that have reached the most people. When I look at statistics for post views, my top posts are almost all craft-focused:

The Kishōtenketsu post, which I wrote in January 2019, is far and away the piece that has reached the most people, perhaps because of its specificity and the relatively small number of writers in English who are talking about it. The post about similes, metaphors, and symbols from October of 2019 I feel really happy about too. That was one that I put a huge about of work into developing, and it makes me happy to see that people are looking at it, hopefully learning something new about these workhorses of figurative language. The anomaly in the list above is one of my teaching-focused posts, but this one too is very practical, about running a slam poetry workshop.

By contrast, those reflective, more personal posts have handfuls of views apiece, mostly those accrued on the first day they were posted when it seems like people are served them through the WordPress app. And this of course makes total sense. What internet search term is going to lead a person to this description of fjord ice in the winter, even if it is I think one of my best posts? And really, what would possess a stranger to be interested enough to read this reflection on my writing journey? It doesn’t offer much of practical value.

And so to the extent that I am trying to get my words into the minds of readers, there is no doubt that the craft-focused posts are the way to go, although I should say too that there are a number of craft-posts that have really not found any readers as well. So it goes. I recognize that, at least by this utilitarian metric, the hard work of writing craft posts is the way to go, and I am really happy to be contributing something practical to other writers.

How does this relate to fiction?

I see myself primarily as a fiction writer, although I do some poetry as well, and the more of them I write, the more I see these reflective, diary-style posts as essays. These are my reflections on the world, bits of creative nonfiction that I am sending back out into that world. They say, “I’m trying to pay attention.” Like literary fiction as opposed to commercial fiction, these essays may not find a large readership, and I suppose I have to make peace with that, or I need to seek out ways to draw more readers into those kinds of posts, somehow get them greater visibility.

The other part of this is that my original purpose with Words like Trees was to build a platform for myself as a writer. But at the end of the day, I don’t primarily see myself as a craft maven; rather, what is most central to me is my engagement with the world in all of its domains. I like to draw connections between writing and other aspects of the universe. I don’t like curling myself up in a small niche.

In the capitalist language used in these circumstances, I am doing some “personal branding.” And my brand might include craft posts, but I sure don’t want to be recognized for those only. I am certain this is very naive to say, but I’ve generally hoped that my personal brand can be more or less my authentic self. Of course it can’t be 100% that way. Of course I elaborate a persona based on what I choose to write about, what emotions I filter through, a kind of “average” of the posts and pictures, which perhaps is more an ideal self than the actual, who is forever developing and growing. But I would rather that be my brand than something less personal and more systematically constructed. Writing is a way of knowing a person. I want to be known.

What of the niche?

I recognize that blogs serve different purposes. Frankly, I think that sticking to a niche is absolutely the way to build the most consistent, focused readership. I think that for bloggers who are seeking to monetize what they are doing, or who use their blog as a gateway to a business venture, the practicality of sticking to one’s niche makes full sense. I’ve said before that I think I blog with mediocrity at best.

As a writer of literary fiction, however, I think that perhaps I even picked the wrong niche, because yes I want to connect with fellow writers, and I have done some of that and loved it, but if I also want to connect with potential readers, and the literary fiction I am writing might span the world, then so should this blog.

Final thoughts

I suppose my answer, then, is to keep doing what I have been doing. I hope that some of these reflective posts might find their way to someone sometime, might mean something to them as they have to me. But until then, I suppose I’ll just keep writing.

And to that end, a few reflective notes here at the closing of this post. We are nearing the end of a really wonderful summer of travels. I feel really blessed and fortunate to have been able to do the things we have, to have been able to cross the ocean, see family, get vaccinated, and return, and because of that vaccine and the privilege it affords me on a global level when the disparity in vaccination between low- and high-income countries continues to be staggering, to be able to come to Italy for the last part of the summer when we had originally planned to be in quarantine in Norway.

I have been journaling about things here, about the experience of returning to a place visited before, of how it has changed and how I have changed. Today, after I post this, it’s a writing day. I’ll try to make some progress on my projects, which sadly have been very stagnant this month. On Wednesday we’ll return to Norway for the start of the new school year. I think I feel ready.

Until next week,
Jimmy