‘Prairie Hostage’ shared this writing wisdom on Writing Forums:

Writing for myself (to me) means writing from my soul. Not just from my head and heart. But from experiences that permanently changed me in the soul of my being.

I think writing for oneself will mean different things to different personalities. Which is wonderful. Therein lies the variety and spice of life.

Prairie Hostage on Writing Forums

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It sounds noble. But how do you get there?

How do you reach that place where you’re writing to know what you think, feel, and want?

Do you keep writing on your chosen topic until you’ve exhausted it or yourself? How do you choose a topic to begin with?

It might be easier, I think, if you’re writing in your diary, I mean, your analogue diary, not an online one that you’ve set to public and where you welcome readers’ comments. But even writing in your analogue diary can prove stifling if you’re self-conscious about people reading it, or if you’re, ahem, hoping that it gets published after your passing.

Talking about diaries published after the authors’ death, and there have been a few, I still cannot decide if it’s a good way to preserve their legacy or just a total breach of privacy.

A few examples of the posthumously published diaries being debated are:

• The Diary of Anne Frank. Or, according to the Anne Frank House, a heavily edited version of her diary. I couldn’t bring myself to finish reading the entire book because her early demise saddened me.
• Sylvia Plath was a North American poet and author. Her diary and journals were published years after her death by her husband, the late English poet Ted Hughes. I read a few of Plath’s poems that were available for free online years ago, and I thought they were sad; this was before I knew that she had committed suicide. Sad.
• Joan Didion, another North American author. Read this article from The Conversation for more about that.

Let us get back to us—we, whose only public writing is on our personal blogs or social media posts. How do we maintain the need to write and balance it with the need to be read? Read and understood.

How do you become your true writerly self?

Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

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