Do My Words Need a Crowd?

Most mornings, I sit down at my computer in my office shed with my note app open. This is the private room, and it’s always been the easiest place for me to write. No one else comes in here. No algorithms, no “likes,” no imagined reader. Just me, pushing words onto a page until something surprising slips out.

The private room has its perks. For one, honesty. I don’t have to translate my thoughts for anyone else. It’s just the raw thing, before it’s dressed up. But that honesty has a shadow: without an audience, my words never face resistance. They never get sharpened against another mind. Sometimes what I write here is brilliant in my own head but dissolves when I try to read it aloud. The room is safe, but it can also become an echo chamber.

Sometimes I wander into the public square after stepping out of that room. This is the plaza where people gather — LinkedIn posts, blog essays, or even just a tweet. Here, words echo differently. They bounce off strangers. Sometimes they spark conversations. Sometimes they fizzle into silence.

The square brings energy. When someone replies, “I’ve felt this too,” there’s a spark of communion. Writing here feels alive, relational. But the square also has its dangers. I start imagining the crowd before I even write. Will this sound smart? Will it get attention? My sentences grow self-conscious, angling for approval. Writing for resonance is one thing; writing for validation is another.

But these days, the public square isn’t really public anymore. Most of us write within walled gardens, what I think of as the rented stall. Think of it as setting up shop in someone else’s marketplace: LinkedIn, Substack, Medium. You pay rent not in money but in obedience to the platform’s rules. The benefit is clear: foot traffic. People wander by, bump into your stall, sample your words. Visibility, reach, distribution. But the landlord — the algorithm — decides who sees you and when. That dependence can warp the writing. You start to wonder, Should I phrase this differently so the algorithm favors me? Suddenly the landlord is editing your draft.

Finally, there’s the home library. This is my personal site, or even just a folder of essays I send to a handful of friends. The library doesn’t buzz like the square. It doesn’t pull in casual foot traffic like the stall. But it feels solid, sovereign. Here, I curate. I decide what stays on the shelves. There’s no algorithm breathing down my neck, no performance anxiety from the crowd. The drawback? It’s quieter. Sometimes too quiet. You can build a beautiful library and no one comes.

So I live between these habitats. Some mornings, the private room is enough — the point is simply to get the words out of my head. Other times, I feel the tug of the square — to test an idea, to see if it resonates. Occasionally I rent a stall, knowing I’ll get more eyes but fewer guarantees. And the library? That’s the long game, the place I want to slowly build into something enduring, even if only a few people ever browse the shelves.

Lately I’ve been asking myself: Do I need to feel guilty if I don’t publish in the loudest square? Maybe writing for ten people who actually know me, who can critique me honestly, is more fulfilling than writing for ten thousand who skim and scroll on.

The work is to move between them with intention, instead of going through whichever door happens to be open.