Writing is the act of saying I
I am reading Joan Didion's book Let Me Tell You What I Mean, and in the essay I particularly bought the book for, titled Why I Write, Didion writes:
In many ways, writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind. It's an aggressive, even a hostile act. You can disguise its aggressiveness all you want with veils of subordinate clauses and [...], alluding rather than stating—but there's no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an imposition of the writer's sensibility on the reader's most private space.
I discovered Didion and this particular essay while researching the use of I, you, and we in writing. I have always considered the use of “you” in writing to be somewhat imposing on the reader. It can imply that I already know you and I am, in a sense, putting words in your mouth.
In the passage quoted above, Didion suggests there is no escaping this, that writing is, by nature, an act of imposing oneself onto others.
Most of my writing begins as notes to myself and therefore carries, when shared, a tone along the lines of “this is what I think, and I am curious what you think about it”. I will probably continue to write this way, as my writing is primarily a way for me to make sense of the world rather than to explain it to others. I would be curious to know what you think.
