It hit me today with the force of a revelation: I’ve been writing for public consumption, for pay, for 17 years. And I have forgotten how to be selfish as a writer. Over time, all my gears have been calibrated toward writing what will please you, the reader.
There isn’t anything wrong with that. I’m happy to do it, and I’m not about to stop now, either. But in 2000 I realized I’d found the thing that would help me fulfill my childhood dream of writing things that would be consumed by more than just myself and friends or family — the internet. I started blogging, and it worked out well for me. I was able to bypass a system my ADHD-addled brain couldn’t handle, the series of gatekeeping institutions that used to bar so many writers from getting their work out to anyone. The internet made all the difference.
In the process, however, I forgot that sometimes I have to write for myself. I’m not saying I stopped; I have kept a peripatetic, rotating set of handwritten notebooks and journals ever since. But when it came to opening a laptop or firing up a desktop and hammering away on the keyboard, I quickly became focused on the audience. On what would “sell.” If not for money, then interest, at least. And of course, that’s always going to be important. It’s always going to be part of what I do.
But I realized tonight that one reason I’ve had trouble updating this newsletter is the feeling I’m doing it for everyone else, just like another writing job. Now…don’t get me wrong. I want you to enjoy whatever I put here. But I am not sure I’ll keep it up unless I can be, for lack of a better word, selfish. Because there are things I need to put out there, to put down in words in white space, that I worry may only matter to me. So I’m going to give that a shot.
That doesn’t mean I’m going to be self-indulgent or navel-gazing in prose. My goal, no matter what — and I do consider this a kind of writing exercise — is to tell a story. I may fictionalize parts of the story if it is particularly personal. If there is one thing I fully understand about writing selfishly but delivering that work to an audience, it is that I need to make it interesting enough to keep you reading.
In my mind, this makes what might come out of this newsletter completely unpredictable. I’m not changing the name, though, because I’m an obsessive and digressive (digressing? I don’t know) kind of guy. Anyway, stay tuned.