Letting Go of the Writing

I often find myself led to thinking about things due to questions people ask on forums or due to conversations (chat and otherwise) I have. Sometimes I start thinking about the original conversation and splinter off, so to speak, to a loosely related topic. And sometimes I dwell on the original topic.

Today's topic: writing for publication. Or, for that matter, writing to a broad audience. Or really, writing to any audience. (I know former professors of mine who would scold me for a premise such as this one. I just moved from specific to broad . . . but that is neither here nor there)

I'm obviously writing to an audience right now. In fact, I bet I could predict who will read and comment on this post. But I shall refrain. Because I can also predict that my prediction won't be completely right. There will be some random stragglers I can't account for. (Until, that is, I get sent my statistics report and see they ended up here as a product of a google search for something that might appear as a short phrase in one of my entries, but the entry itself will have absolutely nothing to do with what they are looking for.)

Anyway, this is what I have discovered (and it's not a new notion, by any means) about writing. Especially writing once you have handed it over to someone else. Once you let it leave your hands, it no longer belongs to you anymore. Sure, you still have possession in the sense you get the copyright.

But I'm not talking about physical possession. I'm not talking about conveying ideas. Once you have presented someone else with anything--a poem, a song, a novel--what you meant for it to mean just doesn't matter anymore. And it isn't that you didn't give it any meaning. It's just that you can't control what it means anymore.

My AP English teacher positively loathed getting analysis essays from us that had any ideas worded such: "The author obviously intended x," or "The author meant that y," because no reader can truly no the intent of an author. Unless the author tells them.

Now shhh . . . but let me tell you something. Sometimes the author didn't have a definite intent outside of writing something entertaining. But remember, you didn't hear that here.

In fact, I would go so far as to argue that if someone who writes something makes their meaning so abundantly clear and obvious it can't be mistaken, expanded, or revised--then that person is not tremendously talented. I'm just sayin'. You can agree or disagree. (Go on, disagree. I dare you. Give me an example of somebody clubbing you over the head with their point and you liked it and thought it artistically well done.)

So as a writer, I think it's important to remember that once it hits the public, the work is out of your hands. The audience gets to decide. And the less unanimous the audience is about what they see and what moves them in your work, the better you are at what you do.

And interestingly enough, when touched by a variety of readers/listeners, some works only evolve and improve over time. After all, a work untouched by an audience never has a chance to be anything other than what the creator thinks it is.