I watched an interview this weekend with Steve Martin about his latest book, An Object Of Beauty, where he said,
No matter how many people say it - 'Oh, I'm just writing this for myself', 'Oh, I'm just doing this for myself' - nobody's doing it for themselves. You're doing it for an audience. So whether I'm performing or writing a book or playing music, it's definitely to be put out there and to be received in some way.
When I heard it I scoffed. After all, I know people who are just writing because they love to do it. It's a hobby, and they will live happy lives even if they never find an agent or publish one word. I thought I was one of them.
Let's face it, we all know the odds are as high as our wobbling stack of to-be-reads that we'll ever get our novel on the shelves - astronomical, in fact. So surely most of us are doing it for the pure joy, right? WRONG.
Writing has always been a way to share feelings and memories; the key word here being share. Whether it's fiction or non-fiction, a short story, a novel or a recipe, even if you only plan on your friends and family reading it, it's still written for someone else.
This blog has become a place to share my dreams, my little accomplishments and my many setbacks with people who are like me and "get" it. For that reason I am eternally grateful to all of my followers and the wonderful writer/bloggers out there that I've been able to connect with. But now I realize the true reason I started this blog was to share all of those things with my kids. No matter how close you are with your children, you can't have full disclosure for a lot of different reasons. And right now, they don't want to hear me blabbering on about my life when they're busy with their own. But I'm betting someday they'll be ready to share.
Do you know anyone who writes purely for themselves? Can you think of any circumstances where you wouldn't want to eventually share your writing with even one person?
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