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Your Vox and the Populi
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John Caruso
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Aug 03, 2004 13:35 PDT
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Your Vox and the Populi
About a week ago I had a conversation with a writer friend of mine. We
talked about our stories. We talked about critiques. And then we talked
about audiences. We decided that a function of writing is communicating
and a function of communicating is expressing one’s self.
We write. We put words down on paper. We arrange them in such a way that
we hope someone will read them. We look for an audience.
We write. We put words down on paper and, given enough time and
practice, we find a way to arrange those words in such a way that is
particular to us. We find a voice.
At some point, these two facets of writing will intersect. At that
intersection we should pause and survey the scene. Do you write to
please an imagined audience or do you write to please yourself, hoping
the audience will follow? As with most choices, this question is
burgeoning with the possibility of extremes. If I write solely toward
pleasing the tastes of some perceived “audience,” I sacrifice my voice
and my vision. If I eschew the reader, I can conceivably slip into a
vortex of incomprehensible, masturbatory ink spilling. What price
audience? What price voice?
If we become a slave to what we consider the tastes and ability of the
masses, we spiral into the lowest common denominator of “See John. See
John write. Write John, write.” On the other hand, if we play the
esoteric artist card we spew something like, “Trampoline toad dance,
jOhN…finger fludge, cantilever.” (Wait, wait, it’s my masterpiece, the
beginning and end of my Finnegans Wake!)
So we balance, we seek a natural buoyancy point. We write. We yearn to
tell stories and we yearn to have people hear them. We enter into a
symbiotic relationship with our readers—not parasitic, not isolationist.
Remember, if a tree falls in the wood and no one is there to write about
it, does it make a sound even if no one reads the story?
And now I think I should find myself some buoyancy.
John Caruso
joh-@coffeehouseforwriters.com
Copyright 2004, John Caruso
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