Write for yourself while serving readers, a productive creative paradox

There’s a useful tension in nonfiction: write for yourself, and don’t lose the reader. Many people collapse these into one impossible task and end up stiff and vague. The fix is to separate mindset from craft. Your mindset should be selfish, in the best way. Follow the line of thought that truly interests you. Your craft should be generous. Remove friction so a stranger can follow that line with you.

Consider a short review a designer wrote about a tool they loved. Draft 1 sounded alive—specific, a little funny, full of tiny observations about the sound of a satisfying click. Draft 2 went corporate and died. We reconstructed the process. First we restored the writer’s stance: why they cared about the click. Then we added craft kindness: a clear description, a photo, and a short how‑to. The result felt like a friend guiding you through their taste.

There’s a micro‑anecdote I share with teams: a data lead who wrote a blunt paragraph beginning, “Here’s the part that confused me.” He kept it in for publication and got more appreciative replies than any polished article he’d written in months. Owning his confusion made the path clearer for everyone else.

Creatively, this aligns with self‑determination theory: autonomy fuels motivation, and competence grows when you see progress. Cognitively, reader empathy helps manage intrinsic and extraneous load. Intrinsic load is the hard part of the topic; don’t simplify it into mush. Extraneous load is the mess you add with clutter, missing context, or jargon. Draft for your curiosity, then edit to reduce extraneous load. That’s the productive paradox: your voice leads, your craft clears the path.

If you can make this separation, you’ll write pieces that are both personal and easy to use. Readers don’t need you to sound like everyone else. They need you to be yourself and to be clear.

Start by promising one thing to readers in a single sentence, then privately write a line about why you care so your voice stays present. Draft freely to please yourself, and only in editing remove jargon, add missing context, and clarify references so a stranger won’t have to guess. Before you ship, ask whether a busy reader would thank you for the structure and trims you made. This small separation makes the paradox workable—give it a shot on your next piece.