There are several ways to interpret 'write for myself'. My primary reason for writing here is to keep my rudimentary skills fresh, so that I can write with a certain degree of clarity at work, and at home when I need to. In that sense I'm writing for myself, practicing the adage "sharpen the saw."
I do write this weblog with the expectation that perhaps my sister will read it once in awhile and thereby be apprised of what's happening around our homestead. But I know darn well she doesn't care what anime or Hong Kong movies I've watched recently, so if I were just writing for her, those articles would be absent.
Do I write differently than I would if I didn't suspect that some unnamed reader's sensibilties would be offended? Yes and no. Yes, this is my 'Disney' weblog, open to the public. So it's gonna be clean, clean, clean. But fact is, if I didn't write here, I wouldn't write anywhere, so in that sense nobody is driving me to write 'differently'.
Finally, I know maybe two people who read this weblog semi-regularly who are not family members. In both cases, it was more of an accident than an intention that they read. If others read more than one post, welcome. But they are unknown to me, and faceless, cannot color my writing.
Ipso facto, I write for myself. Take that, Tom!
Yeah, you told 'em!
ReplyDelete(One of the non-family readers.)
Tom understands me well enough to know I'm using his post as a springboard to cogitate about my own 'mission'. Tom also knows me well enough to give me a hard time anyway!
ReplyDeleteIn keeping with my desire to write, but not work too hard at it, this post was dashed off in a few minutes. I still appreciate the more thoughtful webloggers I read, such as yourself.
By the way, since you post under a pseudonym, you are presumably even more open in your writing than most of us. I was telling Jean today how I found it charming in a Jules Verne/Edgar Allen Poe sort of way that folks in your life are referred to by capital letters...