A Key Member of Any Writer’s Audience Is. . .?
The Importance of Remembering One’s Own Self In the Writing Process
So many of the most wondrous “words of writing wisdom” I’ve found in Medium articles, other online platforms, books, and common dialogue have included the following simple adage:
“Know your audience.”
Yes, knowing your audience is critical. Who your audience is (plus your relationship with the audience )is a key influencer of the structure, tone, and even content of your writing. If your audience is a panel of expert judges in an essay contest, you are naturally going to be more formal and academic in your prose. But if you are putting that essay together for a community newsletter, then you almost have an expectation to be less prim and proper with your approach and style. Additionally, knowing your audience also means caring about readers’ deeper concerns and interests. If your readers feel engaged and even understood, you are certainly going to make a lasting impact and build deeper connections.
At the same time, in this age of online writing platforms, skyrocketing digital publishing, and social media frenzy it can be easy for writers to become too involved with audiences. Certainly, professional writers must make sure to pump out enough vivacity to keep readers coming back or face loss of business. Even scholars or analysts who are writing for altruistic reasons like advancing knowledge or influencing change must consider how many peruse their works to stay relevant. At the same time, placing too much focus on audiences can lead to drastic results. Writers too focused on what others think or how many views their piece will get may lose creativity, motivation, and interest. They may also lose much of their sense of self. After all, how can one write for an audience that does not include their very self as a member? That is almost like the page having no lines or the pen having no ink.
You Cannot Escape From Yourself
Henry Miller famously quoted:
“Writing, like life itself, is a voyage of self-discovey.”
Whether you are composing a piece entirely conjoined to your own self and life(like a memoir) or whether your piece is utterly removed from your personal being (like a scientific article on common pond-dwelling unicellular organisms), how can you ever engage with writing without bringing yourself along for the journey? Unique drafts you compose stem from your own being — channeling your own unparalleled stream of thoughts and consciousness more closely than most other mediums can. Even if you are copy-editing another writer’s drafts or transcribing some recorded words or a set form letter, others’ words are going to channel through your mind and heart before they appear on page. In academic writing and other general scholarly activities, you must even internalize others’ ideas, points, and insights in order to understand them from your own point of view. No matter what, you are finding yourself personally involved with any writing endeavor.
Making Yourself Part of the Audience
Since writing is not solely a personal activity, determining how to properly remember one’s self in the writing process brings numerous difficulties. You cannot simply tell writers to “write with their own voice and words.” Although this is effective advice in many instances, remember that some types of writing — including journalism or many forms of fiction — actually require the opposite. Also, profoundly meaningful bits of wisdom like “write what you know and are passionate about” do not work in numerous instances. What if your work or pursuits take you to domains for which you have no knowledge or personal passion about?
Though so many types of writing require us to put our own personal backgrounds and perspectives on the back burner, we are still bound to find our deeper selves in the mix of any writing project. We can do well to make ourselves part of our writing audience, then. This is where the marvelous writing process comes in. Not only does writing often start with our own personal selves. Every stage of drafting, editing, and redrafting a piece is a chance for us to be one of our own best reviewers and critics. The more we challenge ourselves to improve a piece, the more our work is ready to be shared with a wider audience.
At the same time, we must also remember we ourselves are in many ways are our audience’s most crucial member. Since it is our time, energy, and deeper self being offered to the mix, we need to make sure to ask whether or not the writing pursuit is worth our priceless resources. Sure, the pop-fiction author’s millions of fans may be craving for that next series installment to be released. But what if the author has other pressing needs or priorities, like committing to other projects or even taking time away from the craft to care for family or friends? Also, does a writing project align with the writers’ own values, principles, and point-of-view? It is critical to consider other perspectives and constantly expand one’s horizons, but throwing your own viewpoint and values to the wind throws you into a deep fog. How you be the best writer version of yourself under such conditions?
Sometimes the Audience is Only Meant to Be a Few, or One
This is not the only day and age where establishing a large following and becoming a trusted top-level expert or aficionado are high ideals. Long before social media, video-streaming platforms, or even a few large computers mingling through any type of network, famous writers like Charles Dickens were able to able to publish serials for tens of thousands or more subscribers. But throughout history, many of the most brilliant and historically innovative writers experienced the opposite of this for their works. Some thinkers and writers such as Galileo, Baruch Spinoza, and Georg Cantor even faced profound rebuke and even exile for their revolutionary insights, discoveries, and work. And remember some of the greatest writers and voices, including Anne Frank, never intended for their words to reach even one single other person.
What if you find your writing projects are profoundly original, necessary, and enriching for the larger world but are probably only going to be considered by a few? The worlds libraries are literally filled with hundreds of millions of works produced by writers who dared to contribute to the vast array of human knowledge even if their works remain largely unvistited. (Note, this does not just include written works but types of works stored in libraries. Also, this number would clearly be a small iota of all the works that have been lost, either through time’s wear and tear or never being able to be archived at all). What if you just have to get a piece out there for some deeper cryptic reason, even if it is just to say you have added to the incomprehensibly vast library of human works in some small way? This may indeed be a key part of your personal journey for healing, offering unmatched insights from your point of view, or finding greater levels of spiritual fulfillment. Even if your contribution produces what seem like miniscule ripples in the pond, those ripples can prove immeasurable. How wondrous if your writing impacts but one or a few random readers or helps you reach new heights in your personal journey! No unnoticed or seemingly trivial efforts should ever be dismissed as inconsequential. Remember, the smallest of acorns carefully planted becomes the tallest of oaks.
Self-Focus Leads Back to the Greater Whole
The focus on self in the journey of writing does not simply end in solitude. In writing, like in anything else at some level, focus on the self will eventually link us back to others and the greater whole. Just remember the famous lines from poet John Donne:
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
Each person is seamlessly interconnected with all other people and the greater universe. Every day, each of us will likely consume food grown by unknown hands, travel roadways maintained by strangers, and even fall asleep on mattresses manufactured by unfamiliarOur deeper thoughts plus even our preconscious energies influence others. Imagine what level of positive or negative currents our inner thoughts and dispositions send out. We are hardly scratching from the surface here, but certainly this carries over to the writing process.
Writing is essentially a communal and social activity. Sure, numerous writing projects are bound for the eyes of audiences large and small. But even our most private and solitary of writing is inextricably linked to others. Although we as the individual writers are typically in the driver’s seat of creation and production, anyone who has helped inspire, educate, or influence us in language or the written word is in the driver’s seat. At the same time, our writing sends out waves of influence to others and the larger world in ways we could never expect. Just think of all those innumerable writers(along with greats from countless other fields) who never would have expected their works would touch millions or even billions over centuries. Even if hardly a few or indeed any others come across our writing, isn’t each piece produced like adding another firefly to trillions merrily flashing along on a warm summer night?
So we find writing(like anything else at some level), is really a dance involving the individual, larger human community, and greater whole. The writer cannot isolate themselves from their larger audience any more than a single chord can be isolated from a whole song or a bee can be separated from a hive. And vice versa, the larger audience cannot be isolated from the personal writer any more than an automobile can operate without wheels or a tree absorb the Sun’s energy without its leaves.
Breaks in the balancing act between individual writer and larger community can lead to a breakdown in the writing process itself. While a writer may not always be able to incorporate their own insights, interests, or viewpoints to a project, lack of personal care or investment of deeper self at some level leaves the piece incomplete. And the individual writer is so interconnected to the larger community that if they fail to consider their audience at all — both intended audience and unintended — they are still bound to find their work taking places on the larger human stage never imagined.
