Making good work requires making mistakes. It’s never a straight path to the final work.

If a lot of people see your creative work all the time, then it’ll be more difficult for you to make imperfect work. 

You won’t have space to tinker and experiment so much. You won’t even just be able to share a link that you like—people might think that you’re offering a formal endorsement. You might go viral or get publicly shamed at any point. You don’t want to make a bad impression, or to waste anyone’s time. Publishing becomes a lot more precious.

Reaching a smaller audience used to be a bug, but now it’s a feature. As Donald Glover says, “Making songs now that I know aren’t going to be heard by anybody else, it is an interesting thing. Because I think you have to do that now as an artist. I really do. Because you start to manipulate your work based on other people, which is fine depending on what you’re trying to do.” Sometimes, making things for yourself—that you won’t show anyone else—is a great way to jumpstart your art.

You could also just shrink the audience size as well. Recording artist J. Cole realizes this. “I been wanting a lil blog for years,” he writes in the introductory post of his new blog. “Somewhere to post random [stuff I like] where the audience is way smaller than it is on the social media platforms.”

Blogs are a great way for you to intentionally connect with much fewer people, who are seeking a deeper connection.

P.S., Chamillionaire recently also started a blog. Most of the posts are private, and in order to read them you need to sign up for his membership website. While it’s a more commercial intention, I am glad that he found a new way to use blogs to connect with his audience.