5 Reasons Why A Creative Writer Might Not Be Able To Share Their Profile With You
Not everything is meant for public consumption.
Introduction
Hey there! Do you have any friends, colleagues, or family members who are creative content writers? They could be writers on a platform like this one, or might even be publishing to their very own domain. They could be writing for a company, or might just be writing for themselves like so many writers on here do.
Have you tried asking them for their profile, only to be snubbed and disregarded with variations of the following statement?
“Yeah, I have a part-time job/hobby as a creative writer on this website. I mainly write on XYZ topic, since you know I have expertise on it from doing my primary job/a job I’ve done in the past. I do write a lot about the going-ons from my life as well. Its on a range of topics. There really isn’t a particular subject that I write about. But I’m really sorry, I just can’t share my profile with you. It contains many aspects of my personal life, and you’re too close to me to know about them from a writers perspective”.
Have you ever wondered why they might not be comfortable sharing their work with you? Then scratch your head no more, because I’ve got just the points that elucidates on all the reasons why a content writer friend, relative, or acquaintance of yours might not be comfortable sharing their profile with you.
Here they are:
Issue number 1 — Our thoughts are personal
My thoughts are personal and not meant to be shared amongst every Tom, Dick, and Harry that I meet during my travels. Those thoughts are put down here on Medium under a pseudonym so that I get an objective spectatorship and anonymous feedback on them. The people reading my articles here and those who follow me either do so because they liked my content, agree with some of them, or might even be able to relate with some of the thoughts in them from the happenings in their own lives.
If, and I may say, many of us felt so confident about the world around us that we wouldn’t be mocked and ridiculed for speaking our minds on this platform, the majority of us here on Medium wouldn’t have to resort to writing under pseudonyms.
There’s usually only one of three things that happen once we decide to share our content with our near and dear or anyone else who asks for it:
- They read what we’ve written, explode in our faces for writing about them or on a certain topic that way, and then we lose them from our lives for good.
- They don’t get mad at us for writing it, but insist that the content must be taken down because they don’t want snippets from their life documented in someone else’s writing.
- The worst case scenario: They do both, get hysterically mad at us, and ask us to take down the articles.
Yana Bostongirl painfully elucidates on this particular point in her article, “My Date Ghosted Me After Reading my Blogs”:
“Well, what bothers them more, I wonder? The fact that I will write about them or the fact that they will not like what I write about them. Who wants that sort of drama, right?”
“I am sick and tired of my own culture being my worst enemy, trying to put a muzzle on what is deemed as acceptable topics of writing for ‘nice’ girls — anything else is met with frowns, disapproval, censure, or worse. In the end, one is forced to make a choice, fall in line, or face the consequences.”
I wouldn’t even be able to share my profile with friends and family, forget a date. And believe me, they have asked.
The thing is, when one becomes a creative content writer — especially those who write from life experiences — a lot of our personalities tend to come out through our writing. Characteristics or aspects of us that we wouldn’t necessarily want people in our real lives to know about or see.
Why would I undress my entire personality in front of you by sending you my profile, standing there completely naked so that I can be judged and mocked based on what you think about my content?
That’s like me asking you for your political stance on literally anything; Global politics, current affairs, climate change, the economy, immigration issues, or even your personal life, and then profiling you based on what I just heard. Would you ever do that to your friends? Why would I bare my soul to someone I’ve just met, or have even known for years together?
I wouldn’t do it even if I was in a relationship with someone. Know why? Coz a lot of my writing is going to include the happenings of that relationship of course!
If your content writer friend wouldn’t share his/her articles even with someone they share kisses and cuddles with, what makes you think they’re going to share them with you?
Issue number 2 — Confidentiality
A lot of people are intrigued the moment they hear I’m a content writer and immediately ask for my profile. “Can you share some of your articles with me? I’d love to read them”, they say.
Do they ask the very same thing to someone working a corporate job? Why not? Because of confidentiality clauses, NDA’s, and so on. Right?
Then why the partiality towards freelancers and hobby writers?
Why do you think you’re entitled to read my work just because it isn’t bound by an employee contract?
Just like how a corporate friend of yours wouldn’t be able to show his work to you because of company policy, so can’t I. Granted, I may not be a company. But that doesn’t mean my work doesn’t deserve respect and confidentiality.
Issue number 3 — It could blow up in our faces
Imagine everything that you did with a particular friend or partner put up on a website for all the world to see and comment on. How would you feel? A lot of writers here on Medium like myself come to talk about the world, its indiferrence, its positives, negatives, and how all those factors intersect to affect their lives.
You can’t expect to continue a friendship or relationship by talking about that very relationship on Medium and then sharing that content with those in the relationship, can you?
We could get othered, insulted and mocked, put on the spot during our next get together with friends and family, unfriended, or even have our date ghost us for sharing our writer profile with them, whether it happens to be on Medium or anywhere else all because we chose to speak our truth.
You can’t write about how unfairly you were treated in a relationship, share that article with that person (in which you most certainly referred to them in the third person), and then expect them to continue being in a relationship with you, can you?
Enough said.
Issue 4 — It could attract the wrong kind of attention
You know those people on your Facebook friend list. The ones you don’t personally know, but somehow made acquaintances with somewhere. Or even worse, some of them happen to be purely pen pals whom you have common friends with and get along well with in the comments and discussions.
Suffice it to say that these people aren’t your real friends by any strech of imagination. They aren’t going to be the ones to come to your rescue, should you require their help tomorrow. Then how can I possibly share my deepest thoughts with them? Sure, I’ll share my travel photos, and my travel blogs since we share those common interests. But that’s where the online camaraderie ends.
You cannot expect me to bare my soul to each and every individual on my social media friend list by sharing my articles there.
What if one of them reads my articles, and develops a grudge and personal vendetta against me for my stance on a particular topic? What if they get enraged at one of my articles, invites me for a meeting outside, and then assaults me physically and verbally?
People say, “oh you’re losing out on such a massive audience by not promoting your work on social media”. That may be true. Who knows? I might have even reached 5000 followers by now by promoting my work on social media instead of the paltry numbers I have currently. But I’ll be a hundred times happier knowing my friends and colleagues don’t know the inner workings of my mind the next time I see them.
Issue 5 — Full profile visibility
This issue has more to do with the sharing feature than with the content of an article.
The root of the issue is, when I go ahead and share an article about a certain topic I know will sit well with particular friends of mine, Medium goes ahead and shows them my entire profile. What! seriously?
I’m frankly not that shy and I know at least a dozen articles of mine which I’d love to share with my friends and loved ones but cannot. Know why? Because once they’re done reading that particular article, they can easily click on my profile and see all the other articles I’ve written, and before you know it, I’m being profiled and harassed for certain viewpoints in those other articles that they might not be in agreeance with.
I would love to share certain articles with the people who agree with those viewpoints without them being able to see all the other articles and be privy to all the other views I hold. For instance, I’d love to share some of my articles on veganism with my vegan friends, some of my articles on antinatalism with my antinatalist friends, and some of my articles on trekking with my trekking friends.
There should be a mechanism where I can anonymously share my articles with whomsoever I please without my entire profile being visible to them. In that way, I’m not baring my entire personality to them, and the parts of me that I’d like to keep hidden remain hidden.
What do you guys think?
Is there a workaround for this? Do let me know in the comments.
Conclusion
All things said and done, some of us do share our work with our near and dear ones. If we feel safe around you and believe that you’re close enough to us not to act judgemental when you read our work, we will share our work with you.
But that is not something that can be forced. It has to be something that has to be done out of our very own accord.
