All Writing is a Message in a Bottle
A year after the Titanic sank while crossing the Atlantic, a bottle washed ashore in County Cork, Ireland. The note inside said, simply, “From Titanic, good bye all, Burke of Glanmire, Cork.” Jeremiah Burke was 19 when he penned his last words. He had no way of knowing if they would ever be read, nor that they would find land so close to his home. Yet, with no clear audience, he wrote anyway.
It occurs to me that most writing should follow this model. As writers, we can’t really know our audience beforehand. We can guess or make assumptions, but to what end? Catering to an audience can be perceived as alienating by readers outside of that audience. Burke alienates no one in saying, “Good bye, all.” It is best that writers get to work without thought of who the reader will be.
Burke's message in a bottle. From Cobh Heritage Centre.
Writing at its core is a conveyance of information. As writers, we can imagine we are in conversation and that what we have to say, once conveyed, will prompt a response. We can imagine an audience but if it is not the one that shows up, it's the equivalent of telling an inside joke to someone on the outside. We writers should use our imaginations; but for crafting and honing our original thoughts to match intentions, rather than for predicting reactions to them.
This is a strength of our position as writers. Unlike a conversation, we cannot be interrupted. We have an opportunity to take the time to revise; to be sure we are saying what we mean. Here may be where the tendency to consider our reader creeps in. But revision is about the clarity with which our message is delivered. It is not about clarifying that message's reception.
Distill your thoughts. Cleaner, clearer, and still purely you, they emerge ready to be conveyed. If you've done this without bending to an imagined reader, they will be genuine and true. This is all we can do. Make certain what was in our head is clear on the page. After that, it is up to them to hear you out.
You see there? I’ve said, “it is up to them to hear you out.” It doesn’t matter what you are writing; the idea is to put your thoughts on the page. This is why we write: because we have something to say. Because we want to help, or we want to entertain. It’s about what we want to accomplish as writers. Reading is an entirely separate act. Leave that up to the readers, whoever they become.
This is the truth of the matter: your readers do not exist. Nor will they until they are reading what you write. For now, they are merely beachcombers, wobbling about searching the surf for a message in a bottle.
For a wonderful, fictional examination of the relationship between writer and reader, I recommend Ruth Ozeki's beautiful and original novel, A Tale for the Time Being. It follows sixteen-year-old Nao, who contemplates her life in Japan through the pages of her journal; and Ruth, who discovers and reads the diary a few years later in western Canada. Nao describes the feeling of writing to some unknown future reader, "like I'm reaching forward through time to touch you, and now that you've found it, you're reaching back to touch me."