Online Rule-Makers Suppress Creativity

Click-baity articles designed to make you feel bad about your writing must be ignored.

I remember when I used to write Instagram captions in my head. Bite-sized pieces of text would be composed on a constant loop and I’d pair it with a photograph that had taken me hours to create and edit, then press publish. Every single day.

Yet now, when I open up the Instagram app I’m at a loss. I try to write something for a caption and then give up because it’s just not fun anymore.

And I know at least one of the reasons why. It’s because the ‘professionals’ have come along and told us what we have to do to gain maximum engagement on an algorithm-dominated platform. Use keywords or use a call-to-action are just two of the instructions that hang around in my brain and I can’t let them go. Despite not being interested.

So now, when I attempt to write something fun, chatty and breezy, I feel like I’m trying too hard (I’m breezy!). The instructions are sitting haughtily at the front of my brain and won’t move. As a result, my efforts are stilted. Boring. Just, ugh.

This is pretty much me for any short-form piece of content. Substack Notes was a place I embraced when it first started. Now, I’m struggling with what I want to say there…