Austin Scholar #84: How to help your kid build the confidence to post online
& adding myself in my writing
Hey, y'all!
This week from Austin Scholar...
Austin’s Anecdote: Adding myself in my writing
How to help your kid build the confidence to post online
Scholar’s Sources: More on writing online
This week, I passed one hundred paid subscribers. One hundred people are paying me actual money to read what I write. I am just so incredibly grateful to every single one of you and am constantly working to improve and be worthy of your time and money.
I truly appreciate all of your support and hope all of y’all enjoy this week’s newsletter :)
Austin’s Anecdote: Adding myself in my writing
When I first started to write online, I wrote how I was taught: academically and observationally, which led to some pretty boring writing. Let’s be real: most of the population isn't captivated by pieces written in an academic-formal tone, filled with data and studies presented with perfect grammar.
But that was the type of writing I was comfortable with. It wasn’t scary to publish, because there wasn’t any of me in it.
Then I took David Perell’s online writing class, Write of Passage, and I was introduced to the world of POP writing.
POP stands for personal, observational, and playful. The idea is that engaging, insightful, and interesting writing has a mix of these three elements.
I, however, didn’t think this applied to me. I fundamentally could not understand why some random person would want to read about my life experiences.
Also, although I didn’t want to admit this to myself, I didn’t want to include personality in my writing because I was petrified that people wouldn’t like it – which meant by inference that they didn’t like me.
So, I hid my insecurities under the guise of “I’m not that interesting, so I don’t have any stories to tell.”
But then, during one of the live sessions, David live-edited an article about pancakes.
The first part of the essay was an informational recipe on making healthy, vegan pancakes, while the second part of the essay was about the author's interactions with her children when she makes them pancakes.
On that call I realized the uncomfortable truth: I was so much more engaged when I read about the heartwarming, loving interaction between a mother and her children than I was when I read the recipe.
It was true. I was missing stories and personality in my writing. I had to admit that the personal and playful aspects of a piece have just as much value – if not more – as the observational aspects I was comfortable writing.
The final version of the “pancake essay” was a beautiful piece on the bond between a mother and her kids, complete with a pancake recipe to help other moms experience this same connection. Once the focus of the essay shifted, it was suddenly a much more interesting read.
Okay, so now I understood – intellectually – that I needed to add personality to my writing. But I still couldn’t get myself over that initial fear.
But for my Masterpiece, I knew I had to grow my platform on Twitter. Which requires actually, you know, posting.
So I spent hours and hours perfecting my first post. I ran it through Grammarly at least ten times and got feedback from every person at Alpha High.
Finally, when I couldn’t look at it anymore, I hit publish. And… not a single person saw the post.
That’s the harsh (or freeing) truth about Twitter. No one is going to see your first posts. You don’t have to worry about making them perfect, you can just make them real. I was able to get used to posting online and get those initial rough posts out of the way all at the same time.
Because I was no longer worried about people seeing and disliking my posts, I started experimenting and posting more and being more personal. Because I wasn’t worried about what people would think.
Soon, however, I had a “viral” thread. Suddenly, people were actually reading what I was posting. But before I could freak out and revert to my comfort zone of observational-only writing, I got a DM from one of my followers explaining how inspiring my story is and how it’s helped him to have a better connection with his daughters.
My stories were actually helping people?!
Once I was able to see the impact that my personal anecdotes had on relationships and families, it became easier for me to ignore the negative comments when they did come. And there actually weren't all that many.
In the end, the opportunities that have come from sharing pieces of myself with the world have been well worth the bouts of anxiety and negative comments. I can see that I am making an impact on the world, and that is worth everything.
How to help your kid build the confidence to post online
If you want to help your kid start posting online so they can start to have an impact on the world, here are a few tips to get them over their initial anxiety.
Firstly, have them use a pseudonym to post online. I write under a pseudonym, so when people on Twitter comment “Austin Scholar is the dumbest person in the entire world. If people follow his advice, they’ll ruin their kids’ lives,” it doesn’t feel like they’re attacking me. They’re attacking Austin Scholar, this separate entity that trolls on Twitter assume is a guy or an adult marketing manager (I've actually gotten this, some people think I'm a marketing manager for Alpha pretending to be a teenager).
Going by Austin helps me separate my identity and the things I write.
Secondly, teach your kids how to be an expert. I’ve talked before about the value of being a Sheep God and how to learn how to learn in order to build expertise. If your kid has become a Sheep God (an expert in their space), they won’t be worried about not having insights on a particular topic – they’re already extraordinarily knowledgeable and can say things that no one else in the world can.
They’ll have the observational content down, all that’s left is making it more personal and playful.
Finally, you could try sending them this newsletter. Everything I’ve written up to this point (while useful to teens too) was directed at you, the parent. But what comes next is just for them.
Everything above this line is a newsletter. Everything below is just a letter.
Dear teenagers scared to publish on the internet (I see you. I was just like you):