My tumultuous relationship with subheadings
Yes, I’m calling it tumultuous. Let me take the little things seriously. If our old Floridian neighbors got to obsess over golf day and night… I get to spend an hour reflecting on subheadings.
Before my first “real world” job, I rarely broke my writing into sections. I favored a loose narrative style meant to be read in one sitting where my thoughts transitioned over multiple paragraphs. (I liked to believe these pieces moved reasonably well, but that’s up for debate.)
Then I started writing blogs for clients at my day job. Marketing copy had to be scannable, snappy, and — above all — search-engine friendly. Those goals necessitated subheadings.
Lots of subheadings.
From there I started writing more on my own time about dog ownership and training, eventually leaving my 9-5 to fully pursue this passion. Since I was sharing online (and still spending the bulk of my writing hours on client work at the beginning) it felt natural to continue making copious use of subsections here on Paws and Reflect.
Years went by. I never really looked back. Subheadings were the way of modern writing! Every piece must be easy to gauge at a glance! We can’t trust a reader’s attention span!
Then I rediscovered my love for heading-free writing. This winter I read a series of memoirs and essay collections full of winding paths, empty of roadmaps. They were organized into chapters and made ample use of line breaks to give pause — anarchy certainly didn’t reign — but they flowed beautifully through my head and heart without a single effort to optimize scannability.
Writing for a book is obviously a different pursuit than writing for the internet. We should think about our mediums when sending thoughts out to the world. But is it possible that my obsession with breaking pieces into bite-sized parts made my writing worse as a whole — the way Sean laments the rise of singles over complex full-length albums?
I could outline an idea in a few minutes, lay out the headings on the page, and give myself the illusion that I’d done meaningful work. Then I could let it sit in this website’s draft section for weeks on end. Eventually I’d feel pressure to polish my thoughts, and I’d go subheading by subheading — sometimes not in order — to turn out sentences on the path of least resistance.
Most of the time this went fine. On occasion those outlined headings were even the best technique for the job. There aren’t many articles on here that I’m properly embarrassed of, at least.
But there aren’t many I yearn to show the whole world with a proud smile either.
Part of this is just a preference thing. I crave reflective writing that feels like I’m inside an author’s head — and often this depth is achieved better in flowier pieces than those with a dozen disparate sections. Other times subheadings are the clear answer: guides, how tos. Content fundamentally curated for other people to act on benefits from quicker scannability.
Here lies the question I’ve been circling for the last two months. Who am I writing for?
I always thought I wrote for myself. That was the big draw from the time I was nine years old: to write was to live, to feel, to be me.
In the last few years I think I’ve lost some of that satisfaction, grown distant from the conviction to polish something just for my own sake. I’ve been mourning that experience.
But I write for you, too — and I do it on purpose. There is a reason all these Google Documents created in a private folder (where they could in theory live indefinitely) make their way onto a live website. There is a reason I get so excited to share. Your experiences and your enthusiasm and your connections are contagious.
The truth is that this conversation isn’t about subheadings or bullets or scannable sections at all. It’s about good, honest writing — art that is not limited to one form. I don’t have to sacrifice pacing and rhythm and tiny tendrils of transition for ease of reading. When done well, those things only make a piece better. When done well, headings do the same.
I just haven’t always been doing it well.
This is the year of properly investing myself into things that matter. Physical therapy for my posture. Deep connection with people I love over shallow social media scrolling. And deliberate practice as a writer — for myself, for you, for our fellow creatures who make this world worthwhile.
I’m still friends with subheadings. But I’m not married to them for every piece.