How Do You Even Pick A Niche?
I get *a lot* of writing advice that I don’t follow. Good and bad. Call it ignorance. Call it bad manners. Call it whatever you want. I just don’t follow it.
“Find your niche” was one of them.
What can I say? I’m a decent storyteller but an excellent poet, and poetry tends to take the rules and mash them up like a kid playing in the sandbox and creating intricate castles out of gut punches.
It’s so hard to get started with a blank page for some of us.
To keep going.
When you’re a beginner/newbie, you feel you don’t have anything to say. Nothing to share.
You’re not an expert. You’re not a “thought leader”.
You’re not a person with years of experience to fall back on.
What could you add?
A niche is just a specialized topic(s) you focus on in your content. So why do so many people get the cold sweats on being given this advice?
For me, finding a niche inherently felt confining. Limiting.
You mean, I’m supposed to pick three topics and beat them into the ground ad infinitum? Hard pass.
It’s Easier Than You Think
One of my earliest pieces on Medium was a free-thought ramble about all the “seemingly” inconsistent topics I wanted to write about. Click the link and cringe, babes. (Or feel wildly validated as a newbie writer. *Shrugs*)
The list of topics included sex, psychology, love stories, Christianity, American history, etc.… Looking back, I’ve actually written most of those pieces I mentioned, here or elsewhere, but the surprising-to-me part? They all fit into my niches.
A lot of new writers I’ve spoken with are adamant that they don’t have one/haven’t found one/can’t choose one. When I look over what they’ve written, though, there’s usually 1–2 topics that crop up in almost all their pieces.
One wrote blisteringly funny pieces about surviving the pandemic as a single mother, how blending a family actually works, and how to decorate your home for a child…
