Writing for oneself, not for an audience

I have written a number of stories, and most of my writing is to help me push myself past some personal issues. Some of it gets dark and scary, and would never be allowed on Lit as it is. These are just to get the ideas out of my system, then I dispose of them.

Does anyone else write just for getting it out of their system, with no intent of letting anyone read it?

-CS

Yep, I have stories that are for me and me only. Stories that don't meet (anyone's) criteria for submission, stories that are 'just for me to write about something', and stories that are too close to the heart for me to be willing to have critiqued.

All stories posted on LIT are essentially for the author's gratification. If we think we're writing for an audience, note that they can only pay in brownie points, not cash, so we must be gratified by the symbolism.

We can ignore audiences and write only because we MUST; because the voices in our heads order it; because we need to resolve our real and potential or lost lives; because stories fill our heads, demanding release; because we love spinning tales, storytelling, making-up shit; because we're human.

Many LIT stories seem to have been written as confessions. Excellent!

That's the ONLY way I scribble stuff down. Most of it doesn't even make a 'story' or ever get off my PC.

Cutestarr65 said:

I have written a number of stories, and most of my writing is to help me push myself past some personal issues. Some of it gets dark and scary, and would never be allowed on Lit as it is. These are just to get the ideas out of my system, then I dispose of them.

Does anyone else write just for getting it out of their system, with no intent of letting anyone read it?

-CS

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I've written two stories for which I was the only intended audience.

The first was the longest thing I've ever written--maybe the longest I'll ever write. I just had fun writing without any intention that someone else would read it. I eventually lost it to a disk crash, but remembered pieces of it have made it into some of my published stories.

The second was primarily self-therapy, but when it was done it seemed to me like a good story, so I started to think about publishing it. The content can't be published to Lit. I could publish it to a site without content standards, but I don't want to. A few images and expressions from that story have made it into my published stories, but not many.

Cutestarr65 said:

I have written a number of stories, and most of my writing is to help me push myself past some personal issues. Some of it gets dark and scary, and would never be allowed on Lit as it is. These are just to get the ideas out of my system, then I dispose of them.

Does anyone else write just for getting it out of their system, with no intent of letting anyone read it? -CS

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Yes. Not often, but when I need to get something out of my head, especially if it's dark and negative, writing it out as a story works for me and then I trash them. I dump personal stuff in my stories here and there all the time. It's very therapeutic sometimes.

I have several stories from my misspent youth that are not allowed on Lit because of the age factor. One was rewritten to increase the age and is posted here. I also have a few that are too personal to ever see publication to Lit or anywhere else for that matter.

Otherwise, everything the voices in my head tell me to write usually ends up here. Why? To get rid of the voices, why else?

Cutestarr65 said:

Does anyone else write just for getting it out of their system, with no intent of letting anyone read it?

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Not me. Once something very personal is written, I figure "words once written, need to be read". Sometimes that means an audience of one, but very often the content will show up in a story here, or copied to a select few.

I write mostly for myself, in the sense that I write for my own creative satisfaction, creating storylines and characters that interest me, and I try to write with a prose style and a grammatical proficiency that satisfy my own standards.

But I also have written stories with the aim of trying to reach, and to please, a wide audience. I was relatively pleased with my first few stories, but I noticed that the stories that got the biggest audiences on this site were in the incest category, so I decided to try my hand at writing an incest series that contained elements that I thought would appeal.

I also write for an audience in the sense that I am genuinely curious about the audience's reaction, and I believe strongly that I can learn something from that reaction and use it to improve my writing. So, even if I'm just writing for myself, I'm always aware of the audience and always trying to be respectful of it.

I write for me. I don't write for an audience. But if someone doesn't see it, what's the point?

Many years ago, as a new mechanical engineer I had to man a customer service line on occasion. New engineers do a lot of crap work before they're trusted to actually design anything useful or safe. A classmate designed hub caps for bottom of the line cars for two years at GM before he was trusted. I think he was promoted to ashtrays or armrests--I forgot.

Our customers were commercial users, not consumers. Some were raging assholes on the phone. I was terminally polite on the phone, then would type out a scathing letter to them. I couldn't mail it, but it had to be read. I passed it to other new engineers, then tore it up. Somebody has to read it.

My stories here are the same. I write them for me. I don't consider readers at all during the writing. I post them in case there are others that would enjoy them. If they do, I'm happy for both of us. If they don't, I don't care. But someone has to read them.

rj

I mainly write what I would like to read.

I have about five to six, haven't counted them lately, I have written that I have no intention of post or publishing. I also have some that will be incorporated into my will for family to read, if they even know I die.

There are two others that might make it to the public, I haven't decided yet, but not anytime soon.

So to answer you question...Yes!

SimonDoom said:

I also write for an audience in the sense that I am genuinely curious about the audience's reaction, and I believe strongly that I can learn something from that reaction and use it to improve my writing.

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I don't write for an audience reaction, but I leave comments enabled. I often learn something about writing or about life from comments.

rjordan said:

I write for me. I don't write for an audience. But if someone doesn't see it, what's the point?
rj

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I more or less write what I like to read but also with readers in my mind. I like to entertain and I like to flick readers switches but it has to work for me at some level as well. And yeah, I like it that readers like my stuff but it'd be really hard to write something that didn't work for me too.

While writing mainly for myself, I do write occasionally to niches I feel are underserved.

sr71plt said:

While writing mainly for myself, I do write occasionally to niches I feel are underserved.

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Pilot, I misread that at first as undeserved 'Why'? thought I, then I read it again.

ishtat said:

Pilot, I misread that at first as undeserved 'Why'? thought I, then I read it again.

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LOL. It's much more intriguing that way.

Well, that too, of course.

By posting erotic stories on Literotica, obviously he or she wants others to read them. Otherwise why bother - just write them in a spiral notebook and hide them away.

I think up ideas for stories and ask myself - 'Why is this interesting, and why would others like to read it?'.

Sometimes I succeed. My stories involving a young Italian-American guy who falls for the daughter of a local Mafia boss; a romance between an 18-year-old young man and the 36-year-old single mother across the street; a well intentioned but bumbling college student who finds love with a 6'4 female athlete; and the adventures of two young English girls in World War 2 England as just some examples of my works were all successful. I have tried writing for niche audiences, and one recent example - a story series called 'My Best Friend's Crazy Fat Sister' was written for fat girl/BBW fetishists, and was also a success.

Other times I get it wrong and my stories flop. One Australian story I wrote that bombed this year was about a loser young guy whose strict father treats him the way a military man would treat a dog, until he gets to know the young woman across the road and she turns him around. Nobody was interested, and initially it got low scores. I also thought readers would love an 'opposites attract' story about a posh English girl and a young man who works at a coal mine set during the 1984 UK Miners' strike, but I was wrong and this story is my personal favorite but also my 'Heaven's Gate', even though it got some reasonable scores and some positive feedback.

I don't think anyone writes for themselves. Not really. I think it is an effort to communicate, seeking understanding and perhaps compassion. It is about the intimate realities we often find ourselves in, the dreams we aspire to, an effort to discover we are not alone. We cull so others can't read because of many things, it may be too close to home, too identifying, illegal- so many things because people are complex. If we do it for ourselves is there a little narcissismm involved, hedonism? I have often thought erotica sites are full of wounded people, people who are grieving, who have lost in some way and are trying to discover a way to reduce the pain, or to find they aren't alone, or to enter a fantasy world of escape. Not everyone, but a significant proportion. This is what I think is the basis of it. There are so many reasons and only a very small percentage would be writing for them selves. I haven't covered all of it but it is a start. It would be interesting to discover others feel the same. I have wondered if it could be used to measure social satisfaction in some way.

For me, with the exception of hired writing, I don't press my fingertip to the key if it's not first for me. However, I keep an eye on my audience, and I pretty much know when I'm serving myself over them. The stories I've submitted here that serve only myself (and are unusual) struggle to reach even a 4.00 average vote. So be it.

I'm an admitted recognition whore, and art or porn doesn't exist in a vacuum. If I submit a story, I do want people to like it and comment.

RetroFan said:

By posting erotic stories on Literotica, obviously he or she wants others to read them. Otherwise why bother - just write them in a spiral notebook and hide them away.

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When I started posting here it was to have a repository for them outside my own computer storage.

Denny

jaF0 said:

That's the ONLY way I scribble stuff down. Most of it doesn't even make a 'story' or ever get off my PC.

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I started this way many years ago. Just scribbled notes and photos of games we turned into living fantasies. The notes were only for us to look at as we looked at the old photos and short videos of us when young and foolish.

Somehow most of the notes survived, actually buried in a walk in closet years ago. Several moves and a break-in, we lost the old videos, photos, and much more. Cleaning out the garage in Florida, I accidentally burned hundreds of old photos of Dollie. They were hidden in the bottom of a box of newspapers I'd used when painting car parts. Most of those photos were in clear plastic CB card folders once stuck to the inside garage walk in door and a wall. A young adopted son was my reason for removing the photos.

Then as time went on and more things in my head turned to real life we met others like us who wanted to hear about our daring past games. At first my wife and I shared them over a beer at a campfire or a tiny bar in a far away place where we'd never meet these people again.

We were embarrassed by the games we described yet those strangers kept asking to hear more. We met some of them years later and shared more stories.
As life passed before us, my wife became even more willing to try those fantasy games popping into my head. Those notes became longer and during cold Illinois winters some became stories that I shared through the mail to those random camping and beer drinking friends.

After we retired to Florida we spent more time just laying around nude at home while our adopted son was at school. To offset the boredom of sunbathing and staring at Ravens I began hand printing on a yellow notepad. I sent a few of those stories to perverted friends we'd met at campgrounds, adult nudist parks, and a few nude beaches.

In those places, we talked about sex and more of our games so they'd phone or write during those long spells not seeing them. Rarely anyone sent back a story, only more questions about the stories I mailed to them. The interest was enough to get me to dig out those very old notes and create more stories.

My oldest son gave me a primitive computer set up but I had no internet in the country. Yet I could now type faster, neater, and add photos to the stories. No one except those few special friends would ever read our personal sex stories so I got even more explicit and detailed in sharing those stories.

I got a satellite dish. Now I was learning about internet and after a few friends introduced me to porn sites, I realized there were others doing things we've done all of our lives.

A few motorcycle forums, a few of my stories, set to private, for a few strangers far away to read. Just like this little comment, our stories grew and our audience grew. Now anyone who searches finds our intimate stories originally meant for us alone, then special friends.

As you see, I was writting for myself, and my wife, for times like now, when old and bored, to bring back memories of our youth.

TxRad said:

I have several stories from my misspent youth that are not allowed on Lit because of the age factor. One was rewritten to increase the age and is posted here. I also have a few that are too personal to ever see publication to Lit or anywhere else for that matter.

Otherwise, everything the voices in my head tell me to write usually ends up here. Why? To get rid of the voices, why else?

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I'm sure many of us post stories to Lit for these reasons. I also can't post the early stories because Lit rules don't allow teenagers to have sex or marry. To sort of sneak around some things, I also added years to our ages. Our stories remain true, except for the lies we are forced to tell.

Lucky for you, the voices in my head are reminding me I have a doctors appointment.

In the past, I've kept a diary. That was strictly for me, not for publication.

And there are stories that I've written that will probably never be published anywhere. They were experiments. They're usually discarded, but I've saved a couple that I think might be salvageable.

I can't reveal anything about current writing lest my voices shut up. But I can say I write different sorts of tales for varied reasons, and what I read vs what I write don't overlap.

I write strictly for myself, but that includes gaining occasional brownie points. I write incest tales as puzzle pieces, fitting the improbable into plausibility -- I let readers decide just how plausible. Or an idea jumps out and I must nail it down. An ending appears and I need to trace how it got there. Or a contest or Story Ideas mention inspires hot lies. Or I remember fragments of my wasted youth and explore alternate paths. Whatever.

I may aim at an audience but I'm only in it for the giggles.

Sometimes I look for story ideas that are missing on Literotica (or which seem to be missing), and write about them.

For example, while the tag 'albino' had several stories attached to it, all were in the sci-fi/fantasy/supernatural story categories, and I could not find a single real world story about an albino character. So I devised an albino character named Holly in one of my story series, a sweet-natured 18-year-old girl who deals with the problems albinism causes such as poor eyesight and an intolerance for sunlight.