About one year into its existence, My Mental Milkcrate started to become less about my life than about my writing. Some time after that, I remember making a series of decisions about the kind of writing I would post. That I would not censor myself on the basis of good/bad or how successfully I thought I had conveyed an idea. That I would allow reactions, even if (perhaps especially if) they took the piss out of my writer-ego. That I would not allow my potential audience to limit the expression of my ideas (which is the one I’m still struggling with).
For a couple of years, for one reason or another, I got sloppy about writing at all, even in my catch-all space. But writing has always been important to me. Especially creative writing. I have always been imaginative, and I have always loved the written word. There was no way I could not be a part of it. I recently came the conclusion that I needed to commit to it irrevocably because of the way I look at the world and because of the way I relate to words. Which means, for now, simply making it important enough to supplant other activities.
I write for a blog because it’s instantly gratifying, the content is mostly under my control, and it isn’t isolated. I write more meticulously and the ideas flow more easily when I’m writing for someone. And I do write for specific people; my favourite advice from Kurt Vonnegut is to always write for someone specific (I think he wrote for his sister). The sense of community and the exchange of ideas is also vital to me for any kind of development as a writer. I’m not sure I ever want to come up with something truly original (if it’s even possible), but I do want to take part in the great historical conversation of literature.
I am not objective about what I write. Objectivity is not one of my goals, and I don’t think it is necessarily the best thing for an author. I do strive to be detached and to allow criticism, even if I outright reject the criticism. I put effort into what I write, I know when I’ve put the words exactly where I wanted them, and dammit, I will take satisfaction in my work. But then, no one asked me to be self-effacing. It’s a silly leftover habit.
The inspiration (and title) for this tirade was taken from a post by melograna at Complicity. I have to admit my reaction took a totally different flavour than I meant it to when I first read the post this morning. In my attitudes towards writing, I’ve struggled, and I think come to terms, with just about every point that was made.
I do have a quarrel with one of melograna’s points: I do not believe it is self-indulgent to “write what [you] want to, and then offer it up to others”. It is a great writing exercise to write something you don’t want to or to impose a form on your writing or to write for absolute clarity, but it is not self-indulgent to allow ambiguity to enter your work if the words you used captured what you meant them to. That, to me, is the ultimate goal of a writer: to hit the balance between conveyance and conveyed. To say, “To Hell with the audience” in the writing while permitting their interpretations in the reading. Furthermore, to pretend that a blog, of all places, should be something more than your personal writing playground if that’s what you want it to be is… well, foreign to me. Naval-gazing, self-indulgence: these are useless concepts to me. You are putting whatever you choose out into the murky-misty Internet. This is your claim and you do not have to justify its borders (though you may have to defend them once in a while).
Ultimately, as a writer who has a blog (as opposed to a straight-up blogger), your responsibility is to what you have committed to writing. I want to stitch together phrases sometimes just for the way they sound, but often I want to share a momentary impression or a corner of my imaginary world. And always, I put myself in command and at the mercy of my beloved words.
an absolutely wonderful post. sticking things together by the way they sound and basing things on a collection of good-sounding syllables is much “fun”. (that’s not meant in sarcasm – just fun possibly isn’t the best word, perhaps “enjoyment”.
But it is very experimental, yes, and in many ways writers / authors / anyone with a keyboard can also write whatever they wish, and gather an audience…plus digital type can be awfully transitory…
sorry about the length of this comment, but I very much enjoyed this post.
I could write a whole other post just riffing on this one, and may well do so at some point when not sleep-addled.
I agree in principle about the self indulgence/objectivity argument – it’s just one of my preoccupations at the moment, and I suspect it’s related to another point you made about writing for specific people. My aim right now is to NOT write for a specific person/audience as I have in the past, but just for myself – and this thought has been playing in my mind all day. I’m only interested in measuring myself against myself, at the moment, and I feel as though I’m lacking the markers to do so. However, you’ve made me consider that from another perspective.
I have about a hundred other things to say, but am lacking in cognitive ability right now.
I loved the post, and thanks for making me think :)
I have such mixed feelings about the purpose of my writing. I’d like to believe that I’m writing what I want, what needs to be written, with maybe some awareness of audience, but not for them. But what I really believe is that nothing is truly done without being affected by the knowledge of audience and potential reaction. I may think that I am putting my thoughts and words out there because I just “need to”, that I’m writing for myself only, but I’d be kidding myself. Everything I know influences me at all levels, even when I don’t realize it. Each post is written with the readers in mind, somewhere in mind.
As I said somewhere else, this almost reads like a manifesto – although we would surely be too humble to claim it as such – for those of us who write creatively, and just happen to do so via the medium of a weblog, rather than just posting a shedload of links or telling our reader(s) what we did at the weekend. Thank you.
Mr. Witness – Yes, I found out about your elsewhere and am not entirely certain that this post is as polished as it ought to be. But since it’s out of my hands, I thank you for thinking it’s better than I do. :) It could be a manifesto I suppose; it was intended as a formal declaration of my writing intentions, and I consider myself accountable to my words (which I don’t think I’ve done before).
bohémienne – I think you’d be hard pressed to find a writer that didn’t have mixed feelings about the purpose of her writing. I don’t think the purpose of writing matters. The questions that should supercede “Why do I write?” are “Do I want write? If so, do I want others to read what I write and can I be selective in the reactions I take to heart?” Because in the end, it is all about whether or not you rattle away at a keyboard or take up a pen and whether you can be okay with wherever that takes you.
Melograna – It all comes together: “I’m only interested in measuring myself against myself, at the moment, and I feel as though I’m lacking the markers to do so.” That’s a much trickier issue, and perhaps only comes from adopting others’ markers until you can find your own. I’m glad I could make you think. :)
miles away – Your comment length isn’t any cause for apology. If I really didn’t want people to write long reactions, I would find a way to set a word limit. Which Mr. Witness would find a way to get around anyway. ;)
I really appreciate these wise thoughts. Is it actually possible to write without in some way positing some sort of imagined audience, I wonder? Blogs are a fascinating development in that they enable easy communication of one’s most private thoughts to a potentially vast audience who know nothing else about you. The relationship between ‘writing for oneself’ and writing for an audience is different in this new medium, I think.
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