Dude, screw the audience.
They mean well. They wait so patiently for you to finish
your work, then read it. In some cases, (hi, Internet!) they helpfully point
out what they liked about your piece or, most often, what totally sucked, which
is very constructive criticism.
One of the biggest issues I have when going into the writing
process is that idea of audience. Now, this isn’t always the case. Sometimes, I
can write through a piece easily because I am confident about my concept, what
I want to do with it, and how I can build on it. No, the problem starts when
I’m sitting at my laptop and that stupid sticker I plastered near the keyboard
of Garfield hugging a nug of weed is winking at me and I’m wracking my brain
for ideas that won’t come.
Then the rhetorical questions start.
What can I do that’s
different? What can I do that will make people go, wooooow, what a genius,
please let me buy your currently nonexistent book immediately (be the first of
your friends to give me money!!!!).
It is in these moments, these pre-writing brainstorming
sessions where I can’t find anything to say that the naysayers start creeping
in. Quit while you’re ahead, they
cackle at me. Your audience won’t get the
concept anyway.
I think that’s when we need to start ignoring the audience.
Oftentimes, we (okay, me) fall into this trap of trying to write something
that’s universally appealing or perfect in its first draft. Sometimes we have
to accept - again, me - that someone, somewhere is going to hate what you
write. That terrible review or rejection is going to happen, probably over and
over again, but it should not inhibit the writing process.
Funnily enough, the inspiration for this blog post comes
from an essay I read last semester for ENC 6700, a course we take at FAU that
focuses on writing methodology and rhetoric. The article, titled “Closing My Eyes as I Speak: An Argument for Ignoring
Audience” is focused on helping our students write through any
writer’s block that comes up while drafting academic essays by teaching them
to, at first, not consider the audience at all. The author, Peter Elbow, found
that when students were hung up on how to compose for an academic audience,
they couldn’t even begin the writing process. While Elbow was specifically
focused on academia, I have run into the same problem myself as a creative
writer. Too often, I’m worried about the reception a piece will get even before
I’ve started writing the damn thing.
So, how do I move past this idea of audience so I can
actually produce the work I want to be writing? I have found that the simplest,
and yet hardest, thing to do is just keep going. I take those negative things
my imaginary audience is yelling at me and use them as motivation to develop
the idea at hand.
Of course, it’s easier said than done. But hey, I’ll take
it. And the audience can suck it.
With that being said, please buy my future books!
Mary Mattingly is a fiction candidate in her first year in
Florida Atlantic University's MFA program. Originally from the Detroit, Mich.
area, she is very bad at writing bios and unsure of how to end this one,
whoops, looks like we're done here.
Peter Elbow FTW!
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