Emotional Niche-Crafting
Specialised Subjects that Refuse to be Boxed In
CHOOSING A NICHE can be hard for writers who have varied interests or a rebellious spirit.
But our culture rewards specificity and punishes generality. So whaddya do?
Recently, I've noticed a clever way that some writers are getting all the benefits of nichedom without any of the drawbacks: they do it by owning not a skill, nor a medium, nor a customer of any kind…but an emotional state of mind.
Theirs is the art of emotional nichecraft—resonating with readers through shared feelings, allowing for a broad range of subject matter while maintaining a distinct focus.
Here are three of my favourite writers who are excelling at their emotional nichecraft:
Zach Pogrob crafts obsession
Emily McDowell crafts vulnerability
Mike Sowden crafts curiosity
#1 Zach Pogrob crafts obsession
Zach Pogrob has claimed the mindset of obsession as his emotional niche with his Ten Bullets newsletter and essays. No matter how busy I am, I can’t help but read Zach’s work because it’s always full of fresh and provocative ideas that inspire, prod and puzzle me.
Good is no longer an option.
Great is no longer an option.
Different is all that's left. Being unique is not a 'branding decision,' or a 'strategy,' or a 'unique style' you find on Pinterest.
It's a relentless, consuming, torturous pursuit.
Of searching for what makes you you, and, after finding it, turning it into something for everyone else.
And you only find it through output.
– Excerpt from the essay How to Be Different (without being lucky) by Zach Pogrob
Obsession is a distinctive mental state, yet its reach can extend to almost anything. Zach allows his curiosities to guide him, with obsession as the key to fitting neatly within his emotional niche.
Obsession is a potent emotion that can either enthral or repel. Yet, that's the catch: Zach's work draws in both the intrigued and the sceptical, the latter becoming rubbernecking onlookers.
College felt fake. Everything was manufactured- exams, dining halls, parties. But a 9-1-1 call was real. Most weren't emergencies. But, plenty were life or death. Doing CPR while a family screams at you. Wrestling a seizing patient trying to kill a paramedic. Announcing someone dead, then sitting in a lecture hall 20 minutes later, sipping a fancy drink from Starbucks.
I worked 12 hour shifts, all semester, for zero pay.
I was obsessed.
It was glorious.
I'd go straight from the ambulance to class, to the gym, to weddings for my event business.
I'd watch a dad cry over their daughter's dead body, then a few hours later, watch a dad cry during their father-daughter dance.
Nothing in life made sense.
And it helped everything make sense.
Extremes created clarity.
Intensity became natural.
– Excerpt from the essay On Extremes by Zach Pogrob
Zach does an excellent job of crafting a unique brand around obsession, using visual cues like a symbolic black flag for his followers to display in their bios, uniting them under this shared mindset. The universal potential to feel obsessed grants everyone automatic entry into Zach's community.
#2 Emily McDowell crafts vulnerability
With her Subject to Change blog, Emily McDowell skilfully owns the feelings of vulnerability that come with having varied interests without having all the answers. She builds trust by telling it how it is and teaching her struggles.
“I worked like I was on fire for two decades, trying desperately to accomplish impressive things in an attempt to be happy. And by 2018, I was also a miserable non-person, a quad-shot espresso with feelings, an email-reply robot. And from this place, because I physically could not keep going, I finally surrendered to doing whatever it took to stop being aware of my pain, and start actually healing it.” – Emily McDowell
And few writers can make me laugh like Emily can.
Emily's candour about her niche-finding struggle really resonates, offering reassurance to those in similar boats. Cleverly, she's turned the very reluctance or inability to niche-down into her unique niche.
“I don’t have a lane, meaning I can’t easily summarize the content of this newsletter in 50 words or less. Part of me wishes I could say something like “weeknight salads for the apocalypse!” or “a safe space for cat lovers!” or “viable side hustles for people who would prefer to be reclining in a meadow!,” because we’ve all been told niche down is how to successfully brand something (including yourself).” – Emily McDowell
Emily's honesty about not niching-down, paired with her varied and generously shared works—from essays to podcasts to paintings to mobile phone art—creates a unique coherence. It's a clever, counterintuitive reminder to create and share what you love, trusting that your personal style will blossom with time.
#3 Mike Sowden crafts curiosity
Mike Sowden's Everything is Amazing blog is extremely well-researched and expertly written, funny, down-to-earth and self-deprecating to boot! which certainly resonates with me as a fellow Yorkshireman (if you know, you know). But Mike’s biggest success is in claiming the emotional niche of curiosity!
“[Everything is Amazing] is a newsletter about curiosity. Mine and yours.
Have you ever met someone who is enthusiastic about everything, who is always so much fun to be around (turning everything into an adventure) - and who never, ever seems to be at that kind of loose end that can make Sunday afternoons an interminable hell?
Have you ever looked at them and thought, with a mixture of admiration and envy, “damn, that must be a fun way to live”?
Yeah. Me too.”
– Mike Sowden
There’s so much misinformation and vitriol online these days that Mike's work feels like a memo from the soul, framing science through the lenses of curiosity, attention and wonder. Go back and read those three words again and tell me they don’t make you feel good!
I think Mike's been really smart in calling his blog Everything is Amazing instead of leaning on words like "curious" or "wonder." Unlike Zach's polarising obsession niche, curiosity is pretty much universally embraced. Yet, this popularity could overcrowd Mike's niche, making differentiation tough. Whereas, “Everything is Amazing” stands out without losing its essence.
Finally, Mike writes his blog in topical “seasons” which gives him all the benefits of niching down (ie, focus, depth, authority, audience appeal, less competition, clear messaging and efficient use of resources) without being hemmed in or tied to a topic indefinitely.
Emotional niche-crafting: Flowing forever between the general and the specific
By tying their work to universal emotional states rather than expertise or audience personas, Zach, Emily and Mike have ingeniously carved out unique, resonant niches that are enduring. Maybe even immortal!
Emotional nichecraft shows there is a way to define yourself without confining yourself as a writer. You can have your cake and eat it!
🥮
And that’s not all! Emotional nichecraft is a more sustainable approach to content creation because it recognises the fact that humans change their mind.
Generalist and specialist are two poles on a continuum, each with their benefits and drawbacks. Becoming a specialist rescues us from the insecurity of being a generalist, as illustrated on the Polarity Diagram below1.
But it’s not a one-time fix! as being a specialist eventually leads to boredom and confinement.
When that happens, we can do something to become a generalist again, like broaden our offering or learn new skills.
Until the generalist’s way eventually leads us back to those same feelings of insecurity and the desire to “find our niche.”
It never ends. We flow between these two poles our whole life, like an infinity symbol ∞
“The opposite of a great truth is another truth.” – Niels Bohr
Our culture’s fixation on uniqueness obscures this important natural principle. We all need the agency of both the specialist and the generalist; and we adopt them depending on the context and timing.
By cultivating our emotional nichecraft—that is, by exploring a diversity of topics linked to specific emotions—we can honour both polarities, be both focused and free, and own specialised subjects that refuse to be boxed in.
→ Here is Ten Bullets by Zach Pogrob
→ Here is Subject to Change by Emily McDowell
→ Here is
by Mike SowdenThanks to
, , , , , , , Georg Bulmer, , , Lilian Warutere, , , , , , , , and all my peers at Write of Passage who generously shared feedback and conversations about this piece.The concept of Polarity Diagrams is adapted from Barry Allan Johnson's work in his book Polarity Management. While the foundational idea is not mine, the specific polarity diagrams presented in this essay are my own adaptations, designed to illustrate and expand upon my thesis.
Great term, great concept, and great diagrams! (Breaking it into a sequence made it so clear) ... I will be reflecting for a while on if there’s a shared emotion under my work.
Do you think that some emotions are more expansive than others? For example, if one labels themselves through the emotion of “intensity,” they can have permission to cover any topic around intensity, but it limits them from emotions of slowness, weirdness, etc. Any thoughts?
If you were to pick one emotion for your work, what would it be?
What a fantastic piece, Harrison. Fascinating and illuminating, as I'm launching a new company with a former coworker, and this articulates so many things we'd been circling around, but hadn't been able to fully see. I'm also all about balance, and have been thinking recently how much advice pushes us to pursue one extreme to the exclusion of the other. Love this—great stuff.