As an English major, it’s safe to say that writing is a very key part in my everyday life. In fact, it has become an essential one. Having to read a book a week for classes, trying to find the hidden meanings and dedicating term papers to a single paragraph are the norm, which makes many ask me to read over their homework for grammar mistakes and how to write a proper thesis. I guess that these are questions that come with the territory, as I can image all of us writers have had to deal with them at one point or another. Yet as a writer, I write to one day be known for my writings, and not assumed to be a human spell check.
But as a writer, however, there is one thing that I have noticed about myself that I wonder if other writers have noticed as well. Writing for sites and publications seems to be a given now. As soon as one can, they have to start making their mark on the industry and start building a profile of written pieces to showcase your work. And then I started looking to myself and asked this question –do I write for myself? Or do I write to get noticed.
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When did writing stop being about the story and being about how many likes it gets on Facebook. Why do we care when we see another writer get their 15 minutes of fame when we feel we deserve it? Why do we pitch story ideas solely because we know that they will get over 50 shares, but not the ones we are actually passionate about? When did writing become about being most popular and stop being about writing for yourself. As we strive to write the perfect piece, we forget that in writing we must write as if no one will read. We should pour our souls into our work and write things we have passion for. Is it possible to tie both together?
There is nothing wrong with wanting your articles and your writings to be noticed. Wanting your work to be success and circulated is what every writer strives for. But the value of one’s work shouldn’t be dependent on how many people comment on it. The value of your work shouldn’t be in whether people have negative critiques or not. The value of your piece lays in you, yourself and you are the only person that matters when it comes to how you react to your work. It is wonderful when people react to our work, but it should not be the most important thing.
Write because you love it. Write because it’s the first thing you think about when you wake up and the last thing you think about before you go to bed. Write because you need to and feel that you have to. Write for you and only you. That is when your work will be worth wild and meaningful.
