On writing in the age of noise
Random observations about writing in 2025
July 19, 2025 • Vienna, Austria
Sit down, this will be a long, full-of-questions-without-right-answers post.
So I better begin.
A writer is a writer
I’ve been thinking a lot about what being a writer means and how much deeper this title can go into your perception of self. The reason I’ve been thinking about it so much is because, of course, I’ve been questioning my existence, my abilities, and above all, my purpose on this rocky planet. It may sound like a big thing, as if I’m at a decisive moment in my life. I’m not. I’m the kind of person who questions the reasons every other week. So, it’s really just another Tuesday.
When it comes to writing, I can say it’s a pattern. A cycle that comes and goes. Some days, I truly believe I have a gift, that just as everyone has their own superpower, mine is writing. It’s what I’m good at. It’s what I can offer to help. As if, for some reason, a friend would come and say, “Hey buddy, I really need to create a plot and have some pages written about XY so I can get out of a bad situation, can you help me?” Yeah, I know. It doesn’t sound as useful as knowing how to operate on someone else’s heart. But it’s what I know how to do.
On the good days, I feel proud to have it as my skill. Like my friend Marilia, who can sing. Or my friend Maikon, who can build beautiful wooden furniture. Or my friend Tomaz, who can design the covers of my books. If someone needs something written for any reason, I can be there and help.
Then come the bad days. Whenever I’m feeling insecure or depressed or too beaten by capitalism, I question the only thing that keeps me sane: my writing. Can I really say I’m a writer? What makes a writer one? Is it just the ability to put words together and make sense? Or is making sense not enough, and you need to be good enough to touch someone else’s heart? Or convince someone of something? Or create a plot that can transport people? Is it the amount of words you write a day? A week? Is it the number of copies you’ve sold? If you never publish anything, are you still a writer?
Back when I was a teenager, I used to think you could call yourself a writer only when you had published your first book. Then I published my first book, which made me start to think of writing as work but still couldn’t make me present myself to others as a writer. Some friends would say “This is my friend Paola, she’s a writer” and I would quickly correct them “Don't be silly, I just like writing. I’m not, you know, a writer.”
At that time, after hearing random assholes in overpriced writing courses say that if you don’t write every day, you don’t like writing enough, I’d get angry with myself every time I went to sleep without writing a single word. Tossing and turning in bed, I would think: “You had three hours before bed and you just sat on that couch, too exhausted to do something you say you love. You’re not a writer after all.”
Well, before we go on, I need to pause here and say to whoever needs to read this: You are not less of a writer if you don’t write every day. That’s a ridiculous and harmful lie. I don’t really have the answer to every question I wrote in the last paragraphs. It’s all still confusing in my insecure mind. But for this one, I do. It’s not how much you write that makes you a writer, nor how many books you’ve sold. You are a writer. Even if no one has ever read your words.
Dealing with expectations in a noisy world
Okay, we’ve established that you’re a writer (or a carpenter, or a bus rider, or just a nice person, it doesn’t matter; I bet you can read the next words and fit them to your reality).
So, in being a writer, what does the world expect from you? Because it’s certainly not just to write. The world always expects more. Always.
They don’t just want you to write every day, like I mentioned before. Well, if you don’t, they will call what you love a hobby, since you don’t make time for it in exactly the amount they think you should. But they’ll also expect you to be cool. To have a certain aesthetic. To look a certain way. They expect you to build a platform, post on social media every week (more than once), not only about writing but also about the last coffee shop you went to, or about the clothes you were wearing while sitting in front of an old typewriter.
They, of course, expect you to share your process. And if it’s a normal process — with more stressful, depressed days than good ones — they will not accept it.
They expect you to hustle your work. Constantly. And if you don’t, you’re not enough for the job. You will feel guilty, burnt out, chained to a system that feels, in your head, like the only path to success. And writing will start to lose its shine a bit. Just a bit. Just enough for you to choose not to do it one day or another. Just enough to make it feel like the opposite of freedom, closer to your desk job than to the things that make you smile.
Sadly, being a writer today is inherently tied to being a kind of influencer. You can’t only write. You need to have a brand, promote yourself, have readers and a platform even before being accepted by an agent or a publisher. Actually, whatever you are — if, by the sake of my earlier example, you’re a carpenter — you need to show off what you carve on the internet. You need to work double. They expect you to do your craft and advertising it everyday.
There are some nice exceptions. One of the most famous millennial writers today, Sally Rooney, doesn’t have social media. But she’s not the rule. She actually withdrew from the social media world after Normal People had sold 300,000 copies and she didn’t really need to promote herself anymore. In her case, I dare say, not having social media became part of her reputation, which, in reality, makes her even more famous.
But I digress.
My point is: with the world being the way it is, isn’t it easier to lose the love for the things you like? To give up? To stop having time to write? Not writing every day? Doesn’t this whole circus distract us from the writing itself? And if you stop worrying about it, if you free yourself and deactivate your Instagram account (like I did last year), will you ever be read?
I’m not confident enough to give you an answer that will fill a whole paragraph here. But I will answer, even if briefly: yes, you will be read. Just not by the number of people they say qualifies you as a successful writer. And maybe that won’t feel like enough for you. But you will, undoubtedly, feel free. I’m not sure about fulfillment, though. That one depends entirely on you.
A bookstore with a hundred books
Sometimes I like to imagine how it was back then, before the internet turned every human relationship upside down. I’m a millennial, so yes, I lived a disconnected life for at least a decade. I do know what it was like to grow up like that — to be a child, do stupid things without the fear of them ending up online for the whole world to see and save, so you could never pretend it didn’t happen.
What I don’t know is what it was like to be a writer back then (even though I was writing weird poems and poorly structured novels when I was ten). Before the internet, a writer might only have had to compete with a handful of books at their local bookstore, right? I mean, way back when even sending mail was difficult, slow, and expensive. The most you could expect was for people in the towns around yours, or maybe in other towns in the same state, to know your book, to see it on the shelves of their bookstores.
Back then, when you did manage to get published, I imagine your book would be placed alongside only a hundred others in a nice, probably small, bookstore where readers could see it, maybe buy it, and take it home. I guess even for readers, it was easier. You could just go to your local store, read the titles, judge the covers, and check the synopses to find something new you might like to read during the weekend.
Now we have four million titles to choose from. Which seems democratic, but at the same time, overwhelming. You, the writer, have to compete for attention with the rest of the world, not just the writers from your town or your state. You, the reader, have to hope to randomly find a good book among those four million works, or just go with what “everyone is already reading anyway.”
I don’t know about you, but I always have the feeling I’m missing something good. That there’s a book out there that will break my heart or change my mind about the universe, but it’s hidden, someplace unreachable because of the algorithm.
I’m still not sure if abundance helps or kills connection. There are authors younger than me with 75 published books on Amazon. Considering my age, if I had started publishing books at 18, I would have had to publish five books per year since then to reach that number on my author page. It doesn’t seem believable. But nowadays, with the help of AI, it is.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t judge (well, maybe just a little), because I know there’s a writer behind that person, somehow. At the very least, there’s someone who once had the dream of becoming a writer but was beaten down by algorithms and expectations and this fucking system, so they gave up doing it the old way. And I’m not even going to start on the whole conversation about the deeply distrustful generation we’re creating in this age where art, music, and video can all be AI-generated, and we’re getting closer and closer to losing the ability to discern.
Let me be clear: I use AI a lot to fix my grammar mistakes (I’m not a native english speaker). I also use AI to search for random information. I’m not against AI. I just think there’s a point we’re about to cross that will change what it means to be a writer forever. And that’s something that’s been on my mind lately too.
What if we write in the quiet?
If we take a step away from all of it — if we just write on random Sunday mornings with coffee and a breeze, in a comfortable chair, not in a rush; if we ignore expectations, delete our social media, give a gigantic fuck about the idea of promoting ourselves as a brand; if we stop caring about the competition, the millions of other works that are as good or better than ours; if we place our books in small neighborhood bookstores and wait for someone to notice them, patiently; if we ignore AI completely, stop caring about numbers and clicks; if we shut down the noise and write in the quiet — will it work?
Will it make a difference? Can we really write without thinking about readers? Can we truly feel motivated to put words on paper if we know no one will ever read through our creation? Can we, doing all of it, still consider ourselves as writers?
Well, I told you this was a long, full-of-questions-without-right-answers post. I don’t have those answers. Not sure I ever will. Or if I’ll ever be free from all this wonder and doubts about my craft.
For the last question, at least, I think I can answer with a bit of certainty, after so many years of questioning myself. Yes, we can still consider ourselves writers, even if we don’t do it constantly, loudly, or for an audience. Even if you don’t have a platform, or if you use AI to correct your grammar mistakes. Pouring your brain and heart and fingers into words is not something everyone is willing or capable of doing. Even if no one reads it, or if fifteen people do, or a million, we’re still pulling the words we need to say out from our bodies. And we keep doing it, against all odds.
Because, well, we’re writers.
That’s what we do.
Ler seu post me fez refletir que, como tudo, um dos maiores dilemas da tecnologia na nossa sociedade atual é: ser possível de tudo mas, ao mesmo tempo, ser cobrado de excelência e performance. Acredito que seu texto vai ser ponto de reflexão pra muita gente criativa em diversas áreas, assim como foi pra mim. Também não tenho respostas corretas e gosto de acreditar que continuar criando, fazendo e encaixando nossos hobbies e/ ou talentos dentro da rotina, independente do título do que somos, é um ato de resistência contra o sistema. E um ato de auto preservação e cuidado.