Just yesterday, in Quaker meeting, I was scribbling some notes on personal branding for an upcoming post. Glad to be in conversation about this, and thanks for referencing my year-end piece.
Two hopefully brief comments.
* I think Gen Xers have a natural predisposition to equate niches with selling out. The band was better when it was in the garage. Getting the big record label boxed some artists in -- they had to keep producing what their fans expected. Which is why Cobain sang, "I feel stupid and contagious -- here we are now, entertain us." Millenials and Gen Zers have no such aversion. Taylor Swift is the Ur goddess BECAUSE she is as contagious as possible.
* I especially like your Hippocrates quote. The scholar in me can't resist chiming in that "art," to Hippocrates, meant "medicine." And the Hippocratic tradition was one of the first to attempt physical explanations of disease through close observation. Epilepsy is not demon possession -- it's a brain disease, etc. Art and science are close kin in this sense: because they seek truth, they must change when new truth contradicts the old understanding. And so "the art is long" refers to the long tradition of seeking a broader, more comprehensive, more accurate corpus of medical knowledge. The Hippocratic physicians were not branding themselves as scientists -- they were staking a claim on truth.
OK -- so one more point. I look at the career of my favorite author, Willa Cather, and I do not see a personal brand. She became famous for her Nebraska novels (all written from New York). But many of my favorite works are not set in Nebraska. The Professor's House is set in the Midwest, but the heart of it takes place in New Mexico. Death Comes for the Archbishop takes place in France and in the American Southwest. Shadows on the Rock is set in Quebec. The last two have Catholic themes, but Cather's professor is an atheist. It might be said that Cather found a voice, or a style, that unifies her work. But any resemblance between her style and an enduring "brand" is coincidental. That is not what she set out to do (even though she did care about her book sales). She never used the market to determine what her next project would be. Which one might say is why her oeuvre endures, because by remaining true to her own curiosity and by seeking to tell the truth, it became adaptable to future ages.
I struggle with your question about doing work purely for its own sake. I enjoy all my aspects of my writing, reading, and thinking life, but it's all in the service of knowing myself better so i can be a better writer, a better reader, and a better thinker.
I'm reading and absorbing Bleak House. I'm marking sentences and passages I find particularly effective or speak to themes I'm interested in or show certain tricks of artistry that I'd like to use some day. That increases my enjoyment as well as my concentration, but I recognize a utilitarian aspect inherent in my reading. As well, there are a few themes that have emerged that might furnish ideas for future posts.
Is that work for its own sake? As opposed just surrendering myself to the novel. I don't know.
"One of the greatest gifts of this newsletter has been learning to trust myself again (a decidedly subversive ritual in the modern world), and that’s a theme I intend to explore more, rather than less, as we go on." I applaud this and you!
I too have struggled a lot with the niche question. But after choosing one of late, I think it's largely a misconception that life after committing to a niche is narrow. To niche is to commit to a present moment, course, and obsession that actually turns out to be strangely spacious in its singularity.
But still, within that vastness, we're always eventually required to niche again—saying yes to the birth canal—being willing to risk it all by squeezing through a narrow channel we might just die within, all for the opportunity to find an open temporary playing field we'll eventually have to abandon to repeat the process again.
The problem seems to come with the assumption that a niche must be sustained for a defined duration of time. Could a niche not just be the complete and full expression of human participation in any given moment?
I really like that you splash around in these existential waters. You're like the guy who keeps doing cannonballs off the diving board at the public pool, reminding those of us who are posturing around the edges that getting wet is what this is all about.
There may be more of us who are with you for the journey, niche or no niche, than you think. I'm one of them—interested in watching you explore the ineffable, mysterious, evolving niche that is you.
Continue to curate. Carve a niche from the cosmos one strike at a time. Nothing is random it is procedural. As a former boss of mine used to say: You can only connect the dots looking back.
Here’s what I read my friend. You love being in the rupture. The rupture reveals the layers much like an earthquake or tectonic uplift reveals mysteries of the past. I’ve always marveled at the Red Rocks west of Denver and can’t imagine the force of nature required to create them. Plates upon plates shoving mysteriously and powerfully against one another. So if you love the mystery of the rupture, can you just stay there and write about it? I think you are. Fuck the business...let the outcome be what it is. One thing we continually say in addiction recovery is “I’m no longer in the outcome business.” I’m now in the exploration business, and that’s mysterious and creative and fulfilling. 🤷🏻♂️
Bravo, Latham. First, I love the photo of the world being closed; it's perfect. So much of this resonates with me, so much. The intrinsic value of making art cannot be overstated. Your humility here reminds me of this gem from the Buddha: "Act always as if the future of the universe depended on what you did, while laughing at yourself for thinking that whatever you do makes any difference."
As someone with a lifelong habit of worrying that I'm doing my life "wrong," it's a struggle to give myself permission to follow my heart every day that I sit at the writing desk. It's one of the things I appreciate most about being here on Substack -- encountering brilliant writers whose work I admire, in this big sandbox where we can all experiment.
You've expressed the same misgivings and feelings I've been having for a long time about writing on this platform. I have fallen into the trap of being conditioned into thinking that my lack of a niche is stupidity, a recipe for failure. And there are many times when I have felt like a failure after a year of dedicated weekly writing. My issue is yours: I don't want to "work" on a niche to become a "success" if that means not being true to myself.
I hope to find others who are interested as I am in so many things of the world, who are as curious as me about the diversity of it all. I think I may be destined to not having subscribers, but hope lingers each week and try to improve my writing each post. I look at my letters and feel that they are written fairly well. Maybe I deserve a few more subscribers. But who is to judge? And why do I care to compare so much? I think deep down I thought it would be nice to earn a few hundred dollars this way. It was probably unhelpful to think about that.
In my younger years I was a journalist; then a manager; now a volunteer serving with two non-profit organizations on their boards. I'm not sure where I will be tomorrow, but I do feel that I'm on the same path as you and a number of other writers I have come to admire.
I've been thinking about this, too. That if I just pick a niche, I could be well on my way to monetization and therefore I can focus on just writing? But then I won't be writing what I want because nobody is that singly-dimensioned.
Thanks for sharing your thought process on this. It's nice to know that others are also a bit defiant against this niche conundrum.
Enjoyed this piece Latham. Your Marcel point about problems and mysteries is a nice distinction and it sums up something I've thought for a while: that the desire to find a niche is a 'mystery to be managed and lived with forever' rather than 'a problem to be solved.' When I reflect on my own struggle with niching down, it feels less like something I can dispense with altogether and more like one side of a polarity, the other side being generality—so specificity vs generality—and that I will probs need to welcome the never-ending call to both sides of that polarity my whole life. Some weeks the urge to choose a niche overwhelms me—and that's an important signal I should listen to. Other weeks the urge to generalise (by expanding my skills and knowledge and escaping nichedom) is just as alluring—and that's an important signal too.
Great piece. Love the idea of a newsletter being a playground. You stated (much more eloquently) many of the feelings ive had since starting my writing journey. thank you!
Just yesterday, in Quaker meeting, I was scribbling some notes on personal branding for an upcoming post. Glad to be in conversation about this, and thanks for referencing my year-end piece.
Two hopefully brief comments.
* I think Gen Xers have a natural predisposition to equate niches with selling out. The band was better when it was in the garage. Getting the big record label boxed some artists in -- they had to keep producing what their fans expected. Which is why Cobain sang, "I feel stupid and contagious -- here we are now, entertain us." Millenials and Gen Zers have no such aversion. Taylor Swift is the Ur goddess BECAUSE she is as contagious as possible.
* I especially like your Hippocrates quote. The scholar in me can't resist chiming in that "art," to Hippocrates, meant "medicine." And the Hippocratic tradition was one of the first to attempt physical explanations of disease through close observation. Epilepsy is not demon possession -- it's a brain disease, etc. Art and science are close kin in this sense: because they seek truth, they must change when new truth contradicts the old understanding. And so "the art is long" refers to the long tradition of seeking a broader, more comprehensive, more accurate corpus of medical knowledge. The Hippocratic physicians were not branding themselves as scientists -- they were staking a claim on truth.
OK -- so one more point. I look at the career of my favorite author, Willa Cather, and I do not see a personal brand. She became famous for her Nebraska novels (all written from New York). But many of my favorite works are not set in Nebraska. The Professor's House is set in the Midwest, but the heart of it takes place in New Mexico. Death Comes for the Archbishop takes place in France and in the American Southwest. Shadows on the Rock is set in Quebec. The last two have Catholic themes, but Cather's professor is an atheist. It might be said that Cather found a voice, or a style, that unifies her work. But any resemblance between her style and an enduring "brand" is coincidental. That is not what she set out to do (even though she did care about her book sales). She never used the market to determine what her next project would be. Which one might say is why her oeuvre endures, because by remaining true to her own curiosity and by seeking to tell the truth, it became adaptable to future ages.
I struggle with your question about doing work purely for its own sake. I enjoy all my aspects of my writing, reading, and thinking life, but it's all in the service of knowing myself better so i can be a better writer, a better reader, and a better thinker.
I'm reading and absorbing Bleak House. I'm marking sentences and passages I find particularly effective or speak to themes I'm interested in or show certain tricks of artistry that I'd like to use some day. That increases my enjoyment as well as my concentration, but I recognize a utilitarian aspect inherent in my reading. As well, there are a few themes that have emerged that might furnish ideas for future posts.
Is that work for its own sake? As opposed just surrendering myself to the novel. I don't know.
That which I most feared did not come to pass.at one moment I worried "is he going to close it down? Say it ain't so"
From she who refuses to niche, I applaud the decision.
"One of the greatest gifts of this newsletter has been learning to trust myself again (a decidedly subversive ritual in the modern world), and that’s a theme I intend to explore more, rather than less, as we go on." I applaud this and you!
I too have struggled a lot with the niche question. But after choosing one of late, I think it's largely a misconception that life after committing to a niche is narrow. To niche is to commit to a present moment, course, and obsession that actually turns out to be strangely spacious in its singularity.
But still, within that vastness, we're always eventually required to niche again—saying yes to the birth canal—being willing to risk it all by squeezing through a narrow channel we might just die within, all for the opportunity to find an open temporary playing field we'll eventually have to abandon to repeat the process again.
The problem seems to come with the assumption that a niche must be sustained for a defined duration of time. Could a niche not just be the complete and full expression of human participation in any given moment?
I really like that you splash around in these existential waters. You're like the guy who keeps doing cannonballs off the diving board at the public pool, reminding those of us who are posturing around the edges that getting wet is what this is all about.
There may be more of us who are with you for the journey, niche or no niche, than you think. I'm one of them—interested in watching you explore the ineffable, mysterious, evolving niche that is you.
The meal you prepare is writing because you have no other choice, that you would choke if you couldn’t.
Making a living from it narrows the recipes you follow.
Continue to curate. Carve a niche from the cosmos one strike at a time. Nothing is random it is procedural. As a former boss of mine used to say: You can only connect the dots looking back.
Keep standing at the door. Keep knocking.
Love ya man. Always love reading you.
Here’s what I read my friend. You love being in the rupture. The rupture reveals the layers much like an earthquake or tectonic uplift reveals mysteries of the past. I’ve always marveled at the Red Rocks west of Denver and can’t imagine the force of nature required to create them. Plates upon plates shoving mysteriously and powerfully against one another. So if you love the mystery of the rupture, can you just stay there and write about it? I think you are. Fuck the business...let the outcome be what it is. One thing we continually say in addiction recovery is “I’m no longer in the outcome business.” I’m now in the exploration business, and that’s mysterious and creative and fulfilling. 🤷🏻♂️
Thanks for sharing Latham.
Bravo, Latham. First, I love the photo of the world being closed; it's perfect. So much of this resonates with me, so much. The intrinsic value of making art cannot be overstated. Your humility here reminds me of this gem from the Buddha: "Act always as if the future of the universe depended on what you did, while laughing at yourself for thinking that whatever you do makes any difference."
As someone with a lifelong habit of worrying that I'm doing my life "wrong," it's a struggle to give myself permission to follow my heart every day that I sit at the writing desk. It's one of the things I appreciate most about being here on Substack -- encountering brilliant writers whose work I admire, in this big sandbox where we can all experiment.
You've expressed the same misgivings and feelings I've been having for a long time about writing on this platform. I have fallen into the trap of being conditioned into thinking that my lack of a niche is stupidity, a recipe for failure. And there are many times when I have felt like a failure after a year of dedicated weekly writing. My issue is yours: I don't want to "work" on a niche to become a "success" if that means not being true to myself.
I hope to find others who are interested as I am in so many things of the world, who are as curious as me about the diversity of it all. I think I may be destined to not having subscribers, but hope lingers each week and try to improve my writing each post. I look at my letters and feel that they are written fairly well. Maybe I deserve a few more subscribers. But who is to judge? And why do I care to compare so much? I think deep down I thought it would be nice to earn a few hundred dollars this way. It was probably unhelpful to think about that.
In my younger years I was a journalist; then a manager; now a volunteer serving with two non-profit organizations on their boards. I'm not sure where I will be tomorrow, but I do feel that I'm on the same path as you and a number of other writers I have come to admire.
Thanks for your post. It touched a nerve.
I've been thinking about this, too. That if I just pick a niche, I could be well on my way to monetization and therefore I can focus on just writing? But then I won't be writing what I want because nobody is that singly-dimensioned.
Thanks for sharing your thought process on this. It's nice to know that others are also a bit defiant against this niche conundrum.
Enjoyed this piece Latham. Your Marcel point about problems and mysteries is a nice distinction and it sums up something I've thought for a while: that the desire to find a niche is a 'mystery to be managed and lived with forever' rather than 'a problem to be solved.' When I reflect on my own struggle with niching down, it feels less like something I can dispense with altogether and more like one side of a polarity, the other side being generality—so specificity vs generality—and that I will probs need to welcome the never-ending call to both sides of that polarity my whole life. Some weeks the urge to choose a niche overwhelms me—and that's an important signal I should listen to. Other weeks the urge to generalise (by expanding my skills and knowledge and escaping nichedom) is just as alluring—and that's an important signal too.
The Nicheless Niche. Love it.
Great essay Latham. I feel really similarly about this.
Your niche is you - one of a kind (:
Great piece. Love the idea of a newsletter being a playground. You stated (much more eloquently) many of the feelings ive had since starting my writing journey. thank you!