A good general principle is to write with the mind of child and edit with the mind of a grown-up. And even then lean more towards being childish in your curiosity and joy.

One of the big problems with writing is that many people let other-consciousness dictate what they say even before the ink has hit the page. I'm convinced that's what causes writer's block.

For me the solution was to commit to drafting. Most of my articles are written, and then re-written, and then edited, and then re-edited, giving me a lot of time to evaluate a piece to determine if I really want it to go out there into the world in the form it's in. There are some pieces I've scrapped or set aside indefinitely, but most of them, after I've looked, are good enough that they're worth sharing and letting others talk about.

I suppose there are some problems that arise if you are in an occupation where you have to carefully craft a business persona. And there are also problems if a person likes adversarial writing, because they're always flirting with the possibility of true backlash.

But even in those cases a willingness to draft, redraft, talk with others, redraft again--turning writing into a leisurely process rather than a rushed one--is a good way to protect yourself against any major blunders. And most of the things that people fear (like writing pieces about quirky historical phenomena that are too niche to be appreciated) turn out, in the end, to be those kind of forgivable "misses" that I talked about.

Also if you're keen on historical stuff you should consider applying to Lessons from History, or History of Yesterday, as an author (if you haven't already). There's an entire community of people who like writing about those things.