So What?
I wrote a 4 paragraph post and deleted it. When I got to the end I said “so-what”. Now that I have deleted it I of course wonder if it is a mistake. Then I wrote 2 more paragraphs after writing the last sentence and deleted them. I deleted those paragraphs because I started writing for an “audience” and I was writing so that I would seem smart and worldly. My ego reared its head and demanded to be heard and then it didn't like what it read.
Now I sit facing the question of “Can I write if I don't have an audience that I know?”. Said differently, should I be writing to someone specific? Myself.....me at a certain age....a friend....a figure from history? Having an audience would mean that I am writing things that the audience would want to hear, or that they would enjoy reading so that they would read future things. This is something I want to avoid – so instead of the content I think am just going to focus on the approach. I will write about whatever is in my head regardless of whether it may be interesting but I'm going to write as if it needed to be absorbed by someone with about a 4th grade US education level. This relieves me of the pressure of “so-what”.
Before I close, I'll probe the concept of “so-what” a bit more. Some people are interested and obsessed by some things and other people are bored to tears and have no interest in those same things. So the idea of “So what” really comes down to not wanting to waste people's time. If I imaging the audience is a bunch of football fans I would feel awful writing about gardening tips knowing that everyone of them would be saying “so what”. The problem here is that I have both no audience and everyone as an audience at the same time – this makes it hard to say “so what” and write what I want but I don't think there is any other approach that works.