I write to read

[rowyn]

It always strikes me as odd how my friends list goes quiet on the weekends. I do most of my posting on the weekends, but all my friends apparently do theirs during the week, and then go out and have real lives on the weekend.

I would get a real life but, eh, it's too much trouble.

I was reading through files of old material I've written. Stuff I haven't looked at in years. When I was in graduate school I wrote a short story about a ministrel. I'd forgotten all about writing that story. Turned out I'd written two more pieces to it, buried in my "write" files -- my offline journal since my high school days.

I'd forgotten something else, too: I write because I like to read what I've written. Some time ago, Lut was watching me as I re-read some of my old diary entries, and he asked me, "Why are you reading that?"

I answered, "Because I feel like it."

"But it's your diary. You already know what it says."

I guess this is why Lut doesn't keep a journal.

I like having readers. Some of the things in this journal I would never have written down if I didn't have an audience -- my explanations on 401(k)s or stock options, for example. I write more often because I have an audience here. Instant feedback.

But once upon a time, I wrote where I didn't think anyone would ever read me. With no intention of ever being read by anyone else. I wrote just because. Much of the story bits I had some vague notion that I might be able to sell, someday, in some form.

But every now and then, I wrote something just for me. Not to remind myself how I felt or what I was thinking at a given time. Just to entertain myself. Just because it made me smile.

On February 23, 1996, I had this to write on the subject:

"Look, I wrote another story fragment. I wrote it for me. "Nobody but a blockhead"(1) but I wrote it for me, to amuse me; not because I thought it would be good or worthy of publication, but because I thought it would make me smile. And it did. And it does."

But, y'know, the possibility of an audience has never been far from my mind, as the final part of the above paragraph shows:

"I wonder if it will make anyone else smile?"

Still. Some days I think it's good for me to remember that at least one person in the world enjoys my writing. Heh.

It still does make me smile.

(1) Reference to a quote by Samuel Johnson: "No man but a blockhead ever wrote but for money." No, I didn't footnote this in the original. ;)

Comments

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to hear that other people reread their own writings. I have to, every now and then, to remind myself that it's actually worth writing even if I only get published by a tiny SF press that'll be lucky to sell a thousand copies...

... or if it's just for me, or me and Beetiger, or whatever.

[rowyn]

Yeah. It's good to enjoy your own writing.

The other reason I forget is that I often need some distance before I can judge what I've written. It's rare that I'm really enjoying a scene while I'm writing it. A couple of people have been reading the bits and pieces of my novel as I write them, but often I'll send snippets weeks after I've written them, just because it takes me that long to go back and check them for grammar errors and the like. I just don't want to look at it again right away.

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

It feels like defeat, to write in my LJ on the weekend.

I keep my old stuff around, once I read a story and only halfway through realized I'd written it. Late nights will do that to you...

[rowyn]

I've never read anything without knowing it was mine. But I've read stuff that I'd forgotten writing, and couldn't remember how it ended. :)

NOW I remember...

[krud42.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I have my two cents to add to this thread:

cent #1: If I remembered everything I wrote, I'd just write everything down and be Super Memory Guy. Seriously though, there are times when I read something that I wrote, say, five or more years ago (which is just about everything, at this point), and I can hardly remember writing it, or what I was thinking when I did.

cent #2: I used to always write just for myself; before the internet, I had an extremely limited audience (say, one or two people, and that was on a good day). A lot of the time it wasn't so much, "What would other people like to read?" as it was "What do I want to read?" Sometimes it was just easier for me to make up something that would amuse me than it was to find something new that someone else had written. Nowadays I tend to write just for an audience, real or imagined.

Okay, I'm done.

Re: NOW I remember...

[rowyn]

Re: #1: Very funny, wiseguy. :) Yeah, I mean that feeling of "What was I thinking?" where, even when I'm reading it, I can't remember how it ends or what happened in it. Some years ago I wrote a character description, intended for use on a MUCK but never actually played. In the description, I carefully mention an almost-inconspicuous bulge on the left shoulder. To this DAY I cannot remember WHAT on earth that bulge was supposed to be.

#2: I find myself the same way. I'm thinking of doing more writing that's really just for me, though.