Why You Don’t Need A Niche To Begin Writing
I’ve been given loads of advice over the years from people I respect and admire when it comes to pursuing a career in writing. Most of them are professionals with skin and longevity in the game (publishers, agents, editors, writers) so they know what they’re talking about- which makes it really hard to stand against the one, unifying thread they all seem to agree on:
Find your niche, and write to that audience.
I want to make it clear that I DO NOT disagree with this statement at it’s core, and at the appropriate time. However, it’s this one sentiment that prevented me from submitting my writing anywhere FOR YEARS because:
- I didn’t want to pigeon-hole myself in a genre that I may grow out of and then be unable to get published in any other topic that I’m qualified to have an opinion on.
- Because of that, I had no idea who my, “ideal audience” was.
After years of collecting all of my frantic writing into my google drive to wait, “for another time” when I figured out where to send them; I had an awakening of sorts.
If I didn’t begin pitching these anywhere and everywhere, I’ll have no idea what lands with whom.
I took all afternoon to scroll through my material and made lists of publications for possible submissions. I had pieces on family life, food, parenthood, suffering, faith and spirituality, the Arts and education; just to name a few. I made a spreadsheet with all of the places to submit, with the titles of the pieces I thought would fit the adjoining demographic the most. Then. I blocked out an entire day to simply: submit, submit, submit.
And the most amazing thing happened. I got hundreds of rejections. And several acceptances. One of which had a surprising 28K views in the first week it was published. (You can check it out here). A few others were in the food genre, and a few more were not, “yes’s” but they weren’t, “no’s” after some content editing and communication.
Not only was I able to get my written work out into the world, the process enabled me to identify with whom my style lands the most, and what topics I’m a trusted voice in. This was invaluable information for my next steps as a writer that I would never have been privy to if I had heeded the golden rule of waiting until I could identify my audience and niche; it was so much more effective to have them identify themselves.
