Blog #9
For my other writing classes, it was easy to answer the question of how it has effected my writing. Those classes dealt with my writing and that of my peers. But this class dealt with writing specifically catered to an audience by a small demographic of people. Even though it didn’t give direct assistance with technique or style, it did help with audience recognition. Certain styles or topics are more acceptable within specific audiences, that part’s obvious, but how to go about writing for those audiences without sounding tired and mundane, that’s the hard part. I still don’t know how I’m going to get around it, but that class has made me more aware of that fact that it definitely needs to happen. I don’t know that I like to idea of writing to a target audience. I don’t want to pigeon-hole the reader into defined categories. But that’s the reality of it. And writing without a specific audience in mind can feel lost. It can ramble. It turns into the self pleasure of a writer on paper, which is very hard to read. When I write just for myself, it gets so haphazard and disjointed. The ideas and the structure are all over the place. I need the focus.
My future plans for writing are a little hazy at this point. In my top five things on my life’s priority list, getting published isn’t in it. It’s more than likely a confidence thing. It’s entirely a confidence thing. A hermit thing. Plus, I don’t feel like I’ve finished a piece of writing enough, at this point. But this could all change. I’m taking a little time away from the writing world to go into nonprofit service work and maybe that will shift the balance back in the future. My priorities are in a constant flux, so I’m not going to say either way what my future holds in writing. I just know that I’m going to do it.
