"How Do I Prevent My Ideas and Writing From Sucking?"

TLDR: You Don't

People who want to start writing are frequently crippled by doubt.

“What if my writing sucks?”

“What if I don’t have any interesting ideas?”

“What if nobody reads my articles?”

All these emotions are understandable, but you’re absolutely worrying about the wrong things.

When I started writing around 9 years ago:

• My writing sucked

• My ideas were terrible

• Nobody read my articles

If sucking is what you want to prevent then there is only one viable solution:

Don’t write.

You can find comfort in the fact you will not know how much your ideas and writing suck, because you already gave up before you started.

Not publishing is a perfectly valid solution to protect yourself from your own sucky ideas.

However, that also means you will have no way of finding out which ideas don't suck.

When you write something as an author you're an unreliable narrator when it comes to determining whether it sucks or not. Your readers are much more reliable than your personal judgment. I still have no clue whether readers will like what I’ve written after all these years.

In short: all your ideas suck, until you have evidence to prove otherwise. Not publishing doesn't protect you from sucky ideas.

Publishing can even help you polish your sucky ideas into great ideas.

Which brings me to my second point: either your writing sucks, or it doesn't.

Let's say it sucks. The only way to unsuck your writing is by writing sucky articles and getting better at writing. Publishing something is the only path to better writing.

But because your writing sucks, nobody will read it. They will read a few sentences and quit. Expect your articles to reach very few people. As a result, very few people will judge you.

Let's say it doesn't suck: then what the hell are you worried about?

The most likely scenario, as it was for me when I started writing: your ideas will suck and your writing too.

But I didn't care because I love writing.

And yes, you’re not going to have an audience either, but the only way to build an audience is through frequent publishing of articles.

The primary thing you should be worried about when you start out: am I publishing with a regular interval?

If you take care of that, you will grow an audience, get better at writing and have the chance to unsuck your ideas.

And that’s the moment you should worry about people judging you. Not before you even start. The bigger you are, the more nasty messages you will receive. That sucks, but it comes with the game.

In Dutch we have a saying: “Doe wat je wil, de mensen kletsen toch”. This roughly translates to: “Do as you wish, people will gossip anyway.”

Don’t worry about gossip before you start as nobody cares about your writing yet. Plus gossip and being judged is inevitable anyway.

Worry about two things:

1. Getting started with writing

2. Keep writing at a regular interval like weekly or bi-weekly articles

If you do those two things, I guarantee you will:

1. Improve your writing

2. Get better ideas

3. More people will read your articles because you will be growing an audience

The hardest part about writing is persistence.

If you persist all those worries will most likely go away. And if you have success, that’s the moment you will be judged.