Introduction: setting up a void

furnishing and getting comfy with silence.

I don't know how writers do it nowadays, I don't know how I'm trying to do this (nowadays), or why. But who knows anything really? I have been told to shout into the void until someone, maybe, realises they want to pay me for it, professionally. Woah! that person shouting into the void? yeah, get her at a desk and we can shout in unison — grip our screens and have our little choir song forever and ever.

Hopefully.

I guess I find it hard not to despair. I feel like I’m surrounded by people (and people in screens) complaining about how no one listens nowadays. If people don’t listen, how in hell are they supposed to read? Can we return to being comfortable satisfying one sense at a time? I’m the real hypocrite, of course, and addicted to sensory overload too.

In my own head, I’ve tried to wade out of this self doubt by convincing myself I’ll write something ‘important’. I don’t know how long I’ll believe in my own writing, or if I’ll ever find a… skillset, but I need to let go of ‘important’. I guess I just want to be ‘involved’. Involved in a wider, buzzing conversation—in something heated and ever evolving. Except I feel like I don’t know what I’m talking about, and that I know nothing. Okay, I know you can’t write something if you don’t have a confident voice.

I want to say things emphatically. I’m dropping ‘important’ as a value judgement — my writing is mine (for now), I am going to write about what is ‘important’ to me.

The ‘sense’ in these posts may not seem coherent at first; one thing about writing audience-less is that there are no consequences to my incoherent blubberings, I can write what I like. This is what I like: weaving my different interest, slipping out of my voice, slipping back into personal anecdotes, getting hyperspecific, explaining every detail, not explaining at all (sorry). Hopefully this will eventually develop into a style which makes sense—probably not, I’ll probably drop it. But before I do that, here is my substack. Cool. We are introduced now! bye.