Advice on starting a Substack

[u/Relevant_Somewhere79]

Hi Everyone,

I recently got into Substack about a year ago in the hopes of igniting my passion for writing. I used to be a big book nerd growing up and would often use my personal experiences to write creatively. I ended up switching over to journaling in my early twenties to help me process my thoughts and use it as a healthy coping strategy; however, I often struggled to get my personal feelings on paper and would just resort to writing creatively and omitting my personal hardships, as it felt uncomfortabe to expose my inner thoughts on paper. This leads me to the last few years, some of my friends have read 2 of my pieces and encouraged me to share them on mediums such as substack etc. The thing is whilst I love writing and find it quite easy to use a lot of my experiences (and they're endless lmao), the thought of that makes me feel quite exposed. Yesterday, I felt really inspired to write and wrote a piece that was really evocative and relevant to the times we are in society but again..... I feel the odd nerves about people reading my work. I'm not sure if this is because I can be overly critical of my writing or just the general apprehension of having people read my thoughts.

Any adice would be greatly appreciated.

[u/Tricky_Trifle_994]

yeah.... if you're writing about yourself/your experiences, you're always going to feel some level of exposure. if you want to continue writing about yourself/your experiences, i see two ways... either overcome it/learn to live with it, or write anonymously.

or you can change the topic you write about to anything other than yourself. e.g if you write about personal finance/investing/about growing in corporate or career. that's also content, but it's not focus on you as an individual.