The Whale Belly

From the moment my writing left the privacy of my protected document folder to make its debut to the online public, a new anxiety began seeping into my process. Will they like it? Will they like me? These blog posts — which I never thought of them as beforehand — were a way of getting me used to exposure. I would set a timer for thirty minutes at the start of my day, send off whatever came to my head during that time, and allow it to be tempered by the flames of anonymous eyeballs. No real revision or editing required.

At first it was pure exhilaration. Just the fact that someone took the time to read at least a few words filled me with a sense of potential. When I got my first “like,” which I didn’t even know was a thing someone could do on my site, I was flooded with endorphins. And the first time someone left a comment? Pure terror. Suddenly the anonymous public was making itself known, and when I sat down to write the following morning, the gush of words had been reduced to a trickle. I was no longer dancing in the kitchen by myself, but suddenly thrust on stage with an invisible audience somewhere beyond the stage lights.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. At some point a writer has to learn to manage his ego and write to an audience. It’s something that doesn’t get taught in school, where the audience is usually an audience of one, the teacher. And this artifice trains a writer to work for grades, proving how smart they are by aping the ideas of their teachers and the readings they assign. In the real world this form of writing has no place. It offers no value to real readers, the ones searching for answers during stolen moments in their busy schedules.

As a nascent writer I have to continue to develop a connection to the unconscious outpouring of ideas that I don’t fully understand, but I also have the responsibility to make it communicable and valuable to those who read it. The wisdom behind Hemingway’s aphorism “write drunk, edit sober” resonates. I’ve always hated the revision and editing process; it’s always bored me. Luckily, having a few more eyeballs on my writing has served as an impetus to spend more time caring for each piece of writing I put out in the world. I didn’t force myself to pay more attention to revision so much as necessity made it desirable. It’s an instance of the adaptability of the self, which strangely doesn’t seem to be entirely “me.” Not so much an act of will as a natural change of disposition. I made a repeated choice to put myself out there every day, and that choice is working itself on me in ways that are beneficial to writing.