This morning I stumbled upon the fact that MMOgames is hiring freelance writers. After my initial enthusiasm and serious consideration of applying there I gave it some second thoughts after I got home from work.
You see, I write this blog because I enjoy it. Because it gives me a way to write stuff about what I do on a daily basis, what I like and what I don’t like, I can give opinions about anything or nothing. I can make it completely my own and there is no external pressure to write. If I want to have a hiatus I can! If I want to blog on a daily basis, I can! It just gives me a lot of freedom and enjoyment to have my own little corner on the internet that I can manage myself without having people looking over my shoulders or expecting anything of me. If you’re on a deadline to write though, it’s different. There’s expectations, pressure to not only produce content, but well articulated, opinionated content that doesn’t look like a non-English speaking person who has just had their first course in English wrote it. And I don’t think I’m up for that yet. Hell I don’t really produce that type of content on here either.
It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s more that I’m just not experienced enough to feel up to the challenge. Even if I’ve been blogging for multiple years now I still feel like I’m only a beginner. That there is so much room for me to grow, to produce higher quality content, to make this blog more my own. I feel like I haven’t even reached half of my potential when it comes to writing. It’s why I happily accepted the “blog every day” challenge for August. Not only will it help me produce more content, but I will actually have to think about what I write more to stay interesting, thus challenging myself, thus hopefully produce more interesting reading material.
Of course I could just throw myself into the fray aswell. What’s the worst that could happen? Maybe a deadline is what I need to motivate me to do stuff. Maybe I’ll be an excellent writer. Maybe I’ll even be able to produce more content thatn I could have ever imagined. Maybe. And as long as the maybe’s are this plentiful I think it’s probably not the best idea now to commit to something I have serious doubts about. Even if it would look amazing to have on my resumé, even if it’s something I really wanted to do ever since I got into serious gaming and blogging. It’s just something that I don’t feel confident enough about. I really want to improve my little corner of the internet first. Add a bit more posts that cover more than “look what I did today!”. Have more opinions. Write a few guides. Talk about games that I have completed and what I thought about them in a more lengthy, review style way than I have been doing now. It’s all things that I’m working on and it’s all things that I want to get on my blog on a regular fashion. So untill I’ve done that and feel comfortable with my writing and my opinions and my blogposts, I won’t “go pro”.