On Writing, Critique and Audience

I don’t want my writing to merely become a stale indictment of my frustrated being in this place and unequivocal evidence of the fact that I feel poorly adjusted: I want to explore and think and test out and adventure and develop as a thinker, critic and writer. To this end, I feel I should hold letters to the editor to once a month in order to prevent my critiques from becoming too expected, unnovel and irritating to the general public.

Moreover, I’m looking for someone to vet my writings before I post them, because I do have a tendency for being far more critical than what is generally considered as such (and sometimes even unfairly, bitterly and meanly in ways I do not originally intended); or, possibly, I should always give an additional read (at least one) for meanness or for crotchety-ness: this will help me work through some ideas without going to far to alienate my audience. For maintaining a strong rapport with one’s audience is as key to being considered a credible speaker - of maintaining a status of being someone to whom others continue to listen – as saying the thing that might cause the rift.

The difficulty is knowing how to strike that balance, wherever or however one chooses to, not to mention being willing to - at the cost of fully indulging oneself in critique of the world – still say something that means something without being written off as a mere contrarian or an irreconcilable opponent. Working to maintain ties of community while still honestly publicizing one’s critiques is the name of the game, but doing it in practice is what presents obstacles.

Thinking about the possible effects of one’s utterances is also bound up with this practice of stating in public something of or about the world that may seek to highlight certain problematic, criminal or inhumane aspects in need of redress.

Friends can help us figure what might well become alienating, even if being alienated is sometimes the cost of distancing oneself from the problematic nature of the status quo. What one needs, above all, however, is an anchor: something to remind oneself that one can get through, that at least one other in the world “understands.” Without this person, however, the project can ultimately and finally be futile, doomed and fated to annihilation at the ends of lacking the very community it seeks to produce and engender.

The skill I need to work on, I think, amongst so many others, is identifying when I should say what I want to say and how so as to remain

 Still, every day that I work and write I think and I feel myself that much closer to graduate school, for the labor takes me somewhere, brings me to something: it’s just the how and why and where that will later be figured out, that will yet to be figured out but will be all the same, in good time (and I must just let that go for the time being).