On specialization

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

― Robert A. Heinlein

I have, at various times in my life, read books and articles on how to be an internet writer. In days past, we would have called this person a blogger, but for most of the last 11 years I am best known for my newsletter, and the blog has gotten scraps. And now all the cool kids are on Substack. But at the end of the day, it’s still just writing on the internet.

Anyway, there is lots of advice out there about how to “build a platform”  and “build a brand” and “increase your readership.” And the single most common piece of advice you will get – hell, that I have gotten — was to stick to a niche.

I am sure this is good advice. And yet, I am constitutionally incapable of doing it.

For years, I write heavily about homelessness to promote a nonprofit I was running. I saw it as part of my job, but the whole time I was doing that, I also blogged and ran a newsletter. It would have been smarter to have only written about homelessness, or maybe even expanded to writing about poverty.

But I also want to write about gardening. And nature. And food. And memories. And hope and fidelity to purpose. Maybe some spirituality thrown in for good measure.

There is no section in the bookstore for nature – food – urban poverty – spirituality writers.

I put out a book at the beginning of the year, and it too is a hyphenated book a memoir -cookbook. If I was smart, I would only write about food, but that idea bores me to tears. See also spirituality or nature or gardening.

Part of it is my ADHD, I’m sure. I want to write about whatever I’m excited about at the moment, because writing is one of my ways of thinking. And when I am not excited about something, writing about it is exhausting.

But it cuts the other way too. I am a person who is generally interested in gardening. I own in excess of 150 books on gardening and horticulture. I have a half-acre lot filled with plants I put there on purpose. And sometimes, I am awash in the glories of my garden and yard, filled with butterflies and native bees and flowers and old roses and so many things.

But early this year, I fell into a depressive episode that held me in its clutches and would not let go. Not for love or money could I be convinced to care about my yard. Cutting the grass often enough to not piss off the neighbors was the upper limit of my care. If writing about my garden was my niche and I had readers who depended on me to write about gardening, I would be destitute at the moment.

But instead, I write about lots of things, and I do it well enough that some people stick around to see what I am going to write about next. It does make it damned awkward when you are asked what you do, and you say you are a writer and the next question is, inevitably: What do you write about?

Hell if I know. I’ve been writing online for almost 25 years now, so if I have not figured it out by now, the odds are against my figuring it out.

In any event, If you are reading this, I guess you are OK with my not having it figured out. So, thanks for that. Really. It means more than you know.