When was the last time you wrote something just for you? It isn't something we do often; writing for ourselves. The only familiar concept is that of a diary.
Sometimes people refer to blogs as a kind of public diary, but these days that isn't the case at all. We write blogs for professional development, to teach others things we have learned. We target buzzwords and analyze traffic. We write for vanity, we write to practice writing, we write to contribute to communities.
Do we ever simply write for ourselves?
I remember once reading a comment lamenting that Steve Yegge used to be so much better when he only wrote for himself. What a damningly useless complaint that was, like bemoaning that the nightclub was best before they started letting people inside, or that the Old Facebook was actually different from the New Facebook.
But did Yegge ever actually write for himself? Did I? Has anyone?
Lets turn back to the diary concept. I wrote a diary last year, so why didn't I post it online somewhere in all it's manifold glory?
Mostly because it told a predictable and sad tale: I went to Japan, I was confused a lot, sometimes I was upset, I often drank a beer with dinner. Then I went back home. A great story, isn't it? No? Ah, well, that was the point I was trying to make anyway.
Writing is a form of communication, without an audience it gets lost and meanders to and fro. Just like music, poetry, a conversation or a tree falling in the forest, without a witness writing doesn't exist. If you write a diary but never read it, you never wrote that diary. If you write an email but it isn't delivered, you never wrote that email. If you write a blog entry but even the Googlebot doesn't visit, then you never wrote that blog entry.
Writing is predicated on consumption.
Although not cursed by the fickle transience of speech, writing is nonetheless a form of communication, and communication is a dance that requires at least two partners. This is why I think we can never write for ourselves, because writing has the rarest of properties: it exists once it has been consumed.
Lots of people write mostly for themselves - they're part of the "stereotypical" myspace / xanga / livejournal blog crowd.
They post just like how they would write in a diary, perhaps minus things that they wouldn't feel comfortable letting other people know. And largely, their blogs are (as you suggest yours would be if you posted in such a manner) uneventful, boring stuff that no one that doesn't actually know the person is going to care about.
I personally don't think anything is lost if a lot of people are writing for an audience rather than themselves. I know that these days, when I write a post for my blog it's the the type of thing that I would have written in a notebook I carry around (it may actually be something written in the notebook) - but I don't write a personal diary in the notebook, I write about stuff that I'm thinking hard about, or neat things I discover or do.
If people feel as if they have lost something, they always have the option of keeping an offline diary - and I'd imagine that the type of people that would be writing for themselves in an offline diary, and would gain something (maybe just better "conversational" writing skills, or something more ethereal) probably already do so.
Hisa-bisa man.
I remember once hearing that J.R.R. Tolkien wrote his books because nobody else was writing the kinds of books he wanted to read. I always felt that this is a sort of golden, guiding principal about writing. Write something where you target yourself as the audience, something that would interest you. And then set it loose and have faith that there are other people like you out there as well.
Of course you can write for yourself. Many abuse victims or traumatized individuals are often encouraged by counselors to keep a diary for themselves, to write the pain down and put it on paper with the understanding that no one but themselves will ever read it. It is a useful tool, to have the audience be yourself.
Sometimes these pieces of writing are never read. Just the fact of writing it down and then burning it helps with the recovery process.
The power of writing is more than just communication.
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