I Used To Think That Blogging Is Not For *Real* Writers

I was wrong. Here’s why.

I was walking with my father in Moscow. It was August, still warm, but already gloomy. The city was preparing for a 9-month-long winter.

As we walked past a small park, he turned to me and asked the question that bothered him since I dropped out of college.

“So, who do you want to be?”

“A writer. Blogger,” I replied.

I already knew it was hard to explain that “creating content” is a profession. Even harder to remind that “entrepreneurship” was once was a joke, too.

So saying it bluntly, as I did, was a risk. But worth a shot.

“That’s exactly what I am afraid of,” my father said. “That you’ll become a blogger. That’s my biggest fear. And you know why?”

I looked up at him.

“Because bloggers are all idiots. And I don’t want my son to be an idiot.”

I used to agree with my father.

And, honestly, he is not to blame (he is a great guy). This stigma against new professions is prevalent among many people across the world.

After all, real writers write books — not blog posts. They get awards. They get writing degrees. They work as journalists for a while before venturing out on their own. And even then, somebody has to label you with the word “writer.”

You can’t just call yourself a writer and suddenly be one, right?

Wrong.

In this world, you can.

Blogging Is An Evolution In Writing

If you want to be a creator — you can’t afford to ask, “What works?”.

You have to define that for yourself by experimenting and doing something that wasn’t done before. That’s something you can’t find a blueprint for in Google.

The biggest mistake you can make at 20 is to try and copy your hero’s path. Say, you look up to a prominent writer — and you want to be just like them. So you Google and search and learn about their path.

You find out that they went to school A to get a degree in X, and worked for 7 years at a job Y — and you think that’s what it takes to become successful.

But as I often say, what worked for gurus, works for you, and works in general — are three completely different things. If you’re trying to be the next Elon Musk, you’re not learning from him.

Our job as creators is to define new cliches — not confine to the existing ones.

This is why being a YouTuber is an evolution in filmmaking. Podcasting is an evolution in radio. And blogging is an evolution in writing.

This doesn’t mean that movies, radio, TV, and books disappear. No. The radio didn’t kill the press, and TV didn’t kill the radio — so these new mediums won’t kill anything too.

But they’ll change what we think of as “normal”.

Your Medium Doesn’t Matter

If you are a writer, you might find yourself writing blog posts, Medium articles, Substack newsletter, self-published books on Amazon, tweets, and so on.

You might even decide not to confine yourself to one medium, and take photographs, shoot videos, record podcasts and build businesses in addition to your writing.

You are an artist — which means you can use any medium for self-expression.

The modern world allowed us to choose a new profession that wasn’t there before and make a living doing it.

If I was born just 10 years earlier, I wouldn’t have had a job. There wasn’t such a thing as “Head of Content” or a “Medium writer” back then.

You used to have limited options. At most, you could pick a genre. Today, you have the luxury to choose not just a sphere (e.g., “writing”), but a niche. An audience. A medium.

You can even go beyond the idea of being simply a “writer’.

Succeeding On Platforms Is Way Cooler

Casey Neistat said it first, and I agree with him.

Succeeding on platforms such as YouTube or Medium is way cooler than securing an HBO deal for your movie or a publishing deal for your book.

Because these platforms are meritocratic — meaning, you get what you deserve.

Nobody cares what your name is, or how good you write.

If you don’t show up consistently and with empathy, nobody is going to read or watch you.

There are countless examples of creators who are brilliant at what they do. They are perfectionists. They dedicate a few months to creating a single movie or a single article — only to hit “publish” and find that nobody cares.

Try giving people who look down on bloggers an opportunity to achieve success as a creator.

Let them go through the struggle of showing up to an audience of 3, to have no money, to keep creating even though your head is full of doubt.

They’ll quickly realize how brutal it is.

You’ve got competition. And if you don’t show up tomorrow, your readers will go and find someone else to read. There is no shortage of writers on Medium or vloggers on YouTube.

Succeeding in this honest, plain, bullshit-free environment, where you’re judged only by the quality of your ideas, is very cool.

In This World, Everyone Is A Writer

Writing is not something you do sitting way up in the mountains, all alone and for yourself. No. You do it for others. Because even if you’re creating art, the joy of it is in making an impact.

Today everyone writes all the time. Just count all the texts and emails and Facebook posts that you write in any given week.

Writing — not programming — is the skill of the 21-st century.

And if you can’t communicate your ideas clearly, you won’t be heard.

But, as you’ve probably guessed, not all writers are the same. Whenever you call yourself a “writer” — you need to specify, what kind of writer are you?

You can be:

• A content creator — someone writing content for platforms to build an audience.
• An author — someone writing and publishing books for a living.
• A marketer/advertiser — someone writing copy for ads, newsletters, etc. and getting paid a salary or a retainer.
• An artist — someone writing for self-expression and self-discovery.

There are, of course, many more categories and subcategories which you can go into and specify even further.

But if you do any of the above, congratulations, you are a *real* writer.

It’s time to start calling yourself one.

The world is constantly changing.

What used to be a hobby 5 years ago, is a real profession now. What used to be the right way of things today is obsolete.

Our job as creators is to create this world. Define it. Make sense of it and explain it to others.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what you call yourself.

The key thing is that you’re doing work you’re proud of.

It can be whatever you want. Even if it doesn’t yet exist.

They’ll come up with a name for it in 10 years.