Writing

Who Do You Write For? On Writing Without Need for Recognition

The story of a girl who did not let her creative juices run out

“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative process restive and uprising and gave it neither power nor time.” — Mary Oliver.

My writing stalled for a decade due to a comment made by a friend in college.

He said “You are good…but…” (read ‘good’ in subscript. Medium, please introduce this option on the platform as it will help with my drama).

He said about my poetry “You are good, but I know you can do so much better than this. It reads a bit boring, needs more heart.” This, on a poem I was particularly proud of.

I spiraled and my writing lost all flavour. I didn’t even realize the damage this one innocuous comment had wrought to my psyche.

Firstly, he had stapled my identity to my words — I was good, not my words. I could do so much better, not my writing skills. I was boring. I needed heart.

I was not enough.

I could continue in this lackluster vein. But let me set the stage for you a little more and take you back to my childhood.

I had the seeds. I was playing all the parts a burgeoning writer would in her lifetime achievements movie.

I churned out lengthy rhyming poems (of course), I published in school magazines (woohoo), and I wrote great odes to my friends and high school teachers.

Riding even further back in time, I spent absurd hours as a toddler (who couldn’t yet read), staring at pictures in storybooks. Only my head knew the countless tales I weaved while pretending to know the words that were written.

People around me were very encouraging. I was used to the Wow, That’s Amazings all around as they read my work.

All this to say, my purpose had been cemented for a while. I would grow up to write words, thank you very much.

So when Mr. Dream-Stomper came along (my friend in college), I was caught furiously unawares.

During my decade of non-writing, I couldn’t fully give it up to be honest. I tried to start again so many various different times — in the forms of a blog, college magazines, content creation agencies. Nothing stuck.

My subconscious brain had taken Mr. Stomper’s words to heart and adopted an attitude of prosaicness without telling me.

The people around me had probably been dosing me with good natured flattery with no real substance. I was probably a damned and doomed artist who had fooled herself all along. Yes, I was just an ordinary person.

As my writing endeavours kept failing, I would whine about it to my partner. Then one day he asked me a question that halted me in my tracks.

“Who are you writing for? Are you writing for yourself or for your readers?”

I said, completely unsure if this was actually true “Um, a bit of both maybe? Why can’t I do a bit of both?”

He asked me to think about it the question some more. It would help me understand why I write, the essence behind it.

I knew then he spake the truth.

I stopped writing to please my audience around that time. In fact, I dropped all pretenses. No more flowery intonations, no more posing. I started penning little notes just to myself.

For five years, I only wrote for the sake of healing my soul. It was clumsy, not readily readable to anyone else, and grammatically displeasing. But it came from the heart. And it wasn’t for anyone’s eyes but my own.

I wanted to see if I would stick to it as I moved through life. As I nourished my soul back to self-love through writing, I looked back on my journey and gave great thanks to the HigherPowersthatbe that they had failed me early on. My writing was good, as my friend had said, but what would someone take away from reading it? I had no message to deliver. I needed a ton of introspection in my life before my words could qualify having other’s eyes on it.

Had I continued in the vain vein I was going, expecting external appreciation while not fully understanding the responsibility I had, I would have stayed stuck in the failure cycle.

So in these five years, I have been writing for me. But as my soul recovers, I feel emboldened to write for others again. This time around, it is not for external validation.

I want to extend a healing hand to people with similar journeys as my own — childhood abuse, identity crises, and the spiritual path that joins our parts together. Whether I write ‘well’ or not, I have a higher purpose of dosing people with good energy through my words.

So I have recently started writing on Medium — and I know this time around, I am here to stay. I am constantly amazed by the caliber of writers and stories I find here, and am excited to find my tribe.

Takeaways

I didn’t have the foggiest clue why I would write. If anyone asked me, I would probably say ‘I am good with words? It feels good afterwards? Umm?’

I didn’t know what writing meant to me. I had to lose it for a decade to gain clarity. But that’s because I am slow. If you are in a similar boat, don’t worry if you don’t fully understand your reasons yet. Try to figure out who you are writing for. If you are writing for readership, ensure your authenticity comes through without simply posing for views and adoration.

We must realize the responsibility we have to relay our stories of struggle, hope, and healing.

We mustn’t let a Dream-Stomper stomp out our juices until then.

I highly recommend you check out these articles below:

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Sam Letterwood relays the saga of little Ruby during the pandemic, alongwith a lovely message:

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