Always remember your audience

"Your stuff starts out being just for you… but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right - as right as you can, anyway - it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it." ~Stephen King


Hello again. I have been away for far too long. For the past two weeks, I cannot say I have lived up to my self proclaimed title of "writer." I apologize for this. I am sorry to any of you reading out there, and to myself. The truth is, I took a little break to heal my ego. After much hesitation and deliberation, I finally posted my blog on Facebook with the intention of acquiring followers. I officially unleashed my words to the world, completely forgetting one of the cardinal rules of writing: always remember your audience.

When I was 18, I learned this rule first hand in a writing class I was taking at Onondaga Community College, OCC, "OCC on the ROCK," "Harvard on the Hill," or whichever misnomer your would like to use. I signed up for a few courses there after graduation, it being the closest and most affordable college in Syracuse. Unfortunately, I didn't know a thing about student loans or tuition, and eventually my professor caught on to the fact that I hadn't yet payed a dime to earn a place in his classroom. He asked to speak to me after class one day, wondering if I had paid to register yet, and if not, when I planned on doing so. I lied, and told him next week, so he allowed me to stay and write with the rest of the students.

Our first assignment was simple. Write a short story. And so I did. It was about a line of people waiting in the falling snowing to get into a warm building. In the line: a teammate, my mom, kids I went to school with. In the end, it is revealed that the line leads to a casket, with my body in it. The story was about my funeral. Obviously that year of my life was pretty angst ridden and dark. I wrote the story so well because I actually had imagined my own funeral on countless occasions. I saw it in my head as vividly as if I was there in person. I was proud of the story, and anxious to have my professor grade it.

After arriving to class on what would be my last day, my professor announced to everyone that he was going to read aloud the story he felt best accomplished the task he assigned. Shifting in my cold, uncomfortable chair in the front row of the room, my heart began quickly palpitating when I glanced upwards to see him holding papers with my words on them. No! He can't read that out loud! Please, don't! I didn't even have a chance to interject. He started with my opening sentence.

Every word was excruciating, melting away pieces of me little by little. I felt twenty pairs of eyes on my back with every description and transition. I stared down at the notebook on my desk, my breathing quick and heavy like I had just done the 50 meter hurdles. When the professor was finally finished, which had to be an eternity later, he opened the room up to discussion and asked the students to speak about my story. To this day, I cannot remember what was said, or even if their critiques were negative or positive. However, what stays with me even today is what the professor said after the comments had finished... "Whenever you write anything, there is always an audience. Do NOT forget that someone is reading what you have written."

For a brief moment, I forgot this lesson when I shared my stories with the rest of the world. I forgot that people will inevitably have an opinion about what I put out there. At first I thought, well - that sucks. I'm trying hard to do something here, for myself, for my future. I am desperately attempting to change my life, to fulfill dreams I have been chasing for too long. Basically, I had a temper tantrum. I was mad that people were mad at me for a silly blog I posted. I was sad that they didn't get my jokes, and that they didn't see my true intentions.

But time has passed since then, and now, I really don't give a crap. I've remembered how Henry David Thoreau holed himself up in a cabin in the woods to write about society. Oh man, he sure pissed people off when Walden was finally published. He was critiquing people, he was expressing his own thoughts and desires, and putting it all down on paper. Of course he was going to be judged. As will I each and every time I have something to say.

I am prepared for this great responsibility now. My tantrum is over, my ego healed, and while I should be outside running in preparation for my spring marathon, I am here, writing again. I have reposted the blog that caused such uproarious controversy, and stand proudly behind it. I am an opinionated woman. And I am a writer. Together, these will make for lengthy rants about relationships, work, friends, society, and so on. Read on if you would like. If not you, someone else will surely choose to do so.