On authenticity, writing and putting yourself out there
Honouring some uncomfortable feelings
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As my one year anniversary of writing on Substack approaches, I’ve found myself stuck in a creative rut, my thoughts bending in negative directions. Sometimes these moments are massive and existential in scale. I look at the world burning outside my window and wonder why I even bother writing anything down. More often, though, it’s my own acute insecurity about my writing that takes the wind out of my sails. Insecurity is a sticky emotion, clinging and snagging against the fibres of your life. Just when you think you’ve rid yourself of it, you find more, buried deep.
In the background, I am in the final stages of drafting my debut novel. It is my lifelong dream to have a novel published. In the process of working on my book, I am sometimes struck with moments of self-doubt so intense that I want to abandon it altogether. So many different thoughts swirl the drain of my mind. What if nobody wants to publish it? Worse, what if it is published and fades into obscurity? What if it does well? What if, after that, I am expected to write a second, even better book? Do I have that in me? I once heard a writer say that you spend your entire life writing your first book, only to get 18 months to write your second one. If there is one thing I learned in my twenties, it’s that the gleam of achieving your goal can be so blinding that we often ignore all the other, not-so-shiny things that will inevitably come with it: expectation, insecurity, inner turmoil.
The numbers fed to us by platforms are just like personal wealth. The moment you begin earning more, your lifestyle calibrates frighteningly fast. I used to want 100 subscribers so badly. After that, I wanted 1,000. Once I reached that milestone, I barely patted myself on the back before aiming higher again. If I ever manage to reach 100k, I know for a fact that I will only see one million, far off in the distance. It goes on and on and on. People can say that the numbers don’t matter, but I don’t believe that either. The problem is that it’s so easy to start obsessing over them, turning them over so many times in your hands that they become your fuel instead of your feedback.
Writing brings me an innate joy and cathartic relief which is hard to put into words. I wrote my first “novel” on a spare school copybook when I was about ten years old (for my Irish readers — yes, it was an Aisling copy book). Writing is the constant that has tied all phases of my life together. I would write if I was stranded on a desert island, even with nobody else around to read a word. However, I believe that sharing art is what makes it matter. Writing, music, painting, film, pottery, clothing – none of it really means anything unless it is seen and felt. Art creates magic between people. The most wonderful moments of the past year have been the times when I received messages from friends and strangers saying that what I wrote made them feel relieved because before I wrote it, they thought they were the only ones on earth who felt that way.
Over the past year, the respect I already held for artists and creatives of all mediums has deepened its roots. It’s so easy to snigger at someone else’s project, to laugh at a mediocre new album, to leave the cinema rolling your eyes while calling the movie utter trash. While art and critique naturally go hand in hand, it really takes an immense amount of courage to put yourself out there. It’s why most people are never brave enough to do it.
Once you’ve done it, though, the challenge you face morphs. Now, it’s about clinging to your authentic voice — because once those numbers roll in, they pull you like the tide. All of a sudden, you’re sitting on Substack Notes wondering if you too should post pictures of Carrie Bradshaw with random captions attached. You want to emulate the success of others. Instead of writing about what you want to write about, you start filtering topic ideas by what you think will perform. In the last year, I felt compelled to write more negative pieces about social media because of a previous essay on that topic that did very well. Other posts that I enjoyed writing just as much, especially my more positive pieces, get the least engagement.
After wrestling with these feelings for several months, I’ve managed to crawl out the other side of my insecurities. I am going to push through, write more and see where it takes me because I don’t have another option. It’s scary, but I remind myself that courage is not the absence of fear, but the willingness to act in spite of it.
“Unfortunately I am afraid, as always, of going on. For to go on means going from here, means finding me, losing me, vanishing and beginning again, a stranger first, then little by little the same as always, in another place, where I shall say I have always been”
– Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable
To honour these uncomfortable feelings, I wanted share an example of what it takes to be a true artist. It’s something that helped inspire me out of this weird rut I’ve been stuck in. It comes from an unexpected place: Ethel Cain’s new album.
Ethel Cain is an American singer-songwriter. I’ve been a fan of her genre-mashing music for a while now — her work mixes together elements of grunge, country, gospel and pop music. Her first album, Preachers Daughter, was released in 2022 to critical success, and Cain developed the cult following to match. Her second album, Perverts, released on January 8th 2025, caused quite a stir. The fact that the title of the album is already a little uncomfortable sort of sets the tone for the listening experience. In an abrupt change of creative course, the vast majority of the album is literally noise — industrial, pink noise, dark ambient, slowcore — lacking melody, with Cain’s lyrics either not present or heavily distorted. The few songs where she sings clearly are skeletal and pared back. Nothing is catchy. Compare these two tracks from her first and second album for yourself:
I listened to the new album from beginning to end, walking through slushy snow in the freezing streets of Berlin. It is difficult, atmospheric and powerful, and requires your full attention to get anything out of it. Needless to say, the complaints rolled in thick and fast.
I’m sure that beyond these comments, there is a larger, less vocal segment of fans who felt quiet disappointment that they didn’t get something similar to her last project. Because that’s our default expectation for any artist who finds success, isn’t it? Give us more of the same. But better.
The pressure of following up your breakthrough work must be immense — I don’t envy any artist in this position, whether you’re a musician or a novelist or a filmmaker. If your creative vision begins to veer off the path of validation, your hungry fans can turn into a pack of wolves. Others decided to intellectualise the purpose of Cain’s new album, speculating that she wanted to alienate her more “mainstream” fans. She shooed this idea away with a beautifully blunt response:
The job of an artist is to create art, and their art can’t be made to order. Artists themselves aren’t puppets who do our bidding, but rather people who follow the unpredictable currents of their own inspiration. I just find it so admirable that in a world of TikTok music, Cain released an album that contains 15 minute songs that sound like a violin dying a slow and painful death. She knew it would be divisive and comparatively unpopular. She did it anyway, because she’s the artist.
It really is as simple as that.
Giving people what they want is commerce. Doing what you want is art.
— Bob Lefsetz
Thanks for sharing Ethel Cain’s story. I feel this. For a long time I didn’t write because I had settled into writing about sports and my interests shifted and I was afraid to just write for me, of chasing that internet clout and not being confirmed by that. Letting that go has made writing fun again.
Loved reading this.