Whenever we observe ourselves asking this question, of our selves, we can take it as a sign our energy is low and our brains so far out of our heads we’ve lost our vital perspective on life and begun to expect something back from the world other than what we’ve already got.
When we write online it means we have found the conduit to traditional publishing closed, so we direct the stream of our frenetic output to wherever the words will stick. We keep a blog, we put stories up on Wattpad, and Smashwords and Feedbooks. And the pressure that would arise in our hearts, were we denied any platform for our work, as in the old pre-Internet days, diminishes. We feel temporarily sated. Thus we answer our own question: we write primarily for ourselves.
Or rather we should.
The temptation with online media however is that we can all too easily get hung up on the statistics the media providers provide us with. How many people have read me today? How many followers do I have? How “influential” is my blog? How many messages/comments/likes? How many downloads of Langholm Avenue, of Push Hands, of Between the Tides? And how much more attention might I attract if I wrote one more essay/poem/blog-entry/novel?
Of course all these questions can be reinterpreted as meaning: does anybody know or care I’m here at all? Such existential angst is lurking pretty much at the bottom of us all, and whether we write or not, it is always through some form of expression, verbal or visual we test our status in the world. We push at the world and observe its reaction. And learn from it.
Before the advent of social media, we were restricted in our potential audience to the small circle of people whom we actually met day to day. And to this circle we would brag, and flirt and preen, and tell our anecdotes in order to feel liked and accepted by the degree of warmth and humour and friendship we received back. Now of course, our potential audience is global. We can brag and preen and flirt with the whole world if we so choose. And if we do so choose, it will drain us to a dried up husk. It will make us feel only the more stupid and small, the exact opposite of the dream to which we aspire; the dream of wholeness.
I do not use my Facebook account in spite of Facebook’s periodic nagging for me to do so. But I do not understand how anyone would think the minutia of my life worth keeping up with and see in Facebook only a mask that would allow me to present a side of myself that is fictional, aimed solely at attracting admirers, as a movie star attracts fans. I might post pictures of myself in aviator sunglasses perhaps, while driving my sport’s car, or while climbing a mountain , or while diving into an azure sea from the deck of a yacht while a blonde haired long legged girl looks on adoringly. But I would not post my morning face, my toilet habits, a picture of the cupboard under the sink where I keep my junk, nor of the hairs that habitually block the plughole of my bath, for these are not attractive things and add nothing to the fiction of the attractive, likeable, followable me.
In attracting admirers, we become temporarily reassured of our existence and our possible importance in a life that can seem otherwise empty and meaningless. Thus my three hundred followers can be interpreted as making me a more important person than the man with only fifty followers, while the man with ten thousand followers makes me feel rather inadequate to the extent that I must comfort myself with reassurances that he is somehow cheating.
The brain, the thinking organ, is a fickle creature, lost in a moment, gone like a whippet into the forest, chasing shadows. We think this, we think that, but there is no longer sufficient part of us remaining, residing in the presence of our bodies, to actually feel the fact of our existence at all, and whatever the obscure fact of it is, not to mind it in the least. Indeed the only person we really need seek the approval of is our selves. And by our selves I mean the greater part of our selves, the part who is the watcher of our thoughts. Only there will we find our rest, our peace, and our permission to simply be.
If you follow this blog, then of course I write in the knowledge of signed up listeners and I appreciate your company. But the most important listener for the writer is that inner part of himself, without whose approval nothing he wrote would possess the necessary sincerity to make it worth anyone else’s reading.
The Rivendale Review 
I couldn’t agree more. Oh, and by the way, I’ve had more than 100 views today but have yet to have a bowel movement. How about you?
More than a hundred? Clearly you have friends in high places, Tony. For myself I couldn’t possibly say, not having checked of course.
Sometimes I wonder why I write at all. The only thing I can say is that I never really wanted to do anything but tell stories, from the time I was about ten years old. My friends liked them, so I suppose that was my audience. Everyone needs to find something to do that wins the approval of others. And after all, a writer without readers –well, who wants to be that?
I wish I had more views on my blog, more followers, etc. And I certainly would like to have many, many more readers of my books. But that’s out of my hands. I can only do the work as best as I know how, and pray God finds a use for it.
When I was in my twenties, thirties, and forties, I wrote to become a famous writer, and rich; and it was agony to me, the incessant rejection, while at the same time, books that I could only describe as unadulterated crap made their writers rich and famous.
And so I think I’ve learned that to write for self-aggrandizement is only slightly less fatuous than to write *about* oneself as some kind of super-spy, master warrior, sexual athlete, blah-blah.
There was no social media when I was trying to claw my way up as a writer. You either got published by someone who paid you for your work, or you didn’t get published at all. It was a hard school, and I doubt I’m the better for having attended it.
I write because writing is what God has given me to do. He didn’t make me seven feet tall with great speed and an uncanny ability to toss a basketball through a hoop. Really, there’s nothing else I can do.
Hi Lee,
I can identify with all of this. That we are filled with this burning compulsion to write it seems odd then, even cruel, for fate to deny us a public platform, and we can only trust there’s a purpose to it beyond our knowing. Still, at times, it’s like having a boiler without a safety valve.
I think the lesson I’ve learned over the years is that even a publisher’s book deal would not satisfy that craving. I’d probably even find it frustrating having to work within a publisher’s constraints and to a publisher’s timetable, because I’m awkward and introverted. I think the frustrations, the anxieties and the sense of isolation would all still be there because they are the fuel that drives the work.
I was lucky with some of my short fiction, many years ago now, and was able to contribute to a small magazine in Ireland over a period of about a decade, maybe a couple of times a year. At the time I saw this as a minor miracle, but in the end found it draining, having to write within the same narrow guidelines to suit a perceived market, time after time. And I was working for pocket money, still going nowhere and with no chance of quitting the day job.
No one reads those stories now. They’re gone, pulped, though I was months polishing each of them and it seems a waste. As for the windows into the market for longer fiction they’re so opaque I don’t bother looking for them any more. Yes, I was guilty of wanting to make myself big as a published author, but as you get older you realise it doesn’t matter much that, like you say, it’s just vanity.
What I like about writing online is that our stuff doesn’t disappear, we have total creative freedom, and it’s great to get the occasional ping from someone who’s read our stuff. Sure, like you say, it would be great to have a few more followers and more people downloading, but it’s out of our hands and wise not to count on it. Some people have mailed and said kind things about my writing, you included. And that makes it worthwhile.
Thank again,
Kind regards
Michael
Someday I’ll tell you about the novel that my publisher had me rewrite from top to bottom–in two weeks! Patty was worried because my lips were going white with the strain.
Oops–it seems I’ve already told you about it.
Wow, that’s what I call a deadline. I hope it was worth it in the end.
Oh, it resulted in a pretty good Stephen King knockoff, and earned me some royalties. But it was a horror novel, the horror market soon afterward imploded, and I don’t write that kind of book anymore.