This afternoon, I have written out of a slight desperation on my whiteboard : fuck format.
Why? Because I’ve been wrecking my brain on how to come up with a good hook/intro for a post on Les Papiers all day. I know what I want to say, I have a plan and yet…. The intro. It’s usually what gets me. Once I have a good one, I can go on forever but if I don’t… I feel angleless and everything turns to mush. I start to question the whole purpose of the piece, which generally leads me to doubting my own too. I’m kind of dramatic that way about my work.
Actually let me clearer : I thought it was the intro. But now I’ve realised it’s because I’m putting again another set of expectations on my writing : format. I don’t just write, I write an article. And that’s what’s mucking everything up. Because not every idea will fit into an article. Sometimes it just wants to be a Note, or a short tutorial. Or… some kind of format we are not used to. That’s kind of the reason behind this blog.
My most favorite writers have blogs. Oftentimes loose blogs where the articles are short or long or messy or structured. And I never quite understood why they would “hide” their writing up there. Surely, most blog posts are as good as Substack articles. But now I understand the distinction. You CAN make anything into a Substack article. Meaning : you can write a 10000 word essay or 10 lines about a joke. The system won't stop you. That’s actually a thing we forget about platforms, you don’t HAVE to follow the cultural format.
see : platforms are medium
So although we might be able to write a 2-lines substack article, we mostly don't. But that's the thing with blogs : a blog is a place where the cultural medium is determined by your own stupidly personal habits. The cultural norm of your own blog is you.
I’m not sure I’m being clear. Let’s try this way : even though a platform can be used many ways, it still has a preference. And it’s hard not to follow the herd down the cliff. You get influenced against your will. So having your own space is an answer to that. There, you can write however.
Funny how I thought this was going to be a short, couple of lines max, kind of thought. Almost could have been a Substack article. And hey, it can still be !