I am a writer. I write because I like to write. I don’t like writing what I don’t want to write. I don’t write for money; I can’t write for money. I don’t always write, but when I do write, I write what I want to write. Not what people want me to write. That’s alright… right?

At least I write.

To a lot of people, the idea of writing for no audience is ludicrous. What other reason is there to pen words onto paper, if not for someone to read them? Well, I don’t know, honestly. All that I know is that I like to write, and I write sometimes. Not often, these days. Not a lot. I certainly don’t write on this blog very often, but you must merely take my word for it: I do write. A good portion of the things I produce remain unseen by any eyes other than my own––at most a few friends. I don’t want people to see, and I don’t need people to see. It seems strange, but I don’t write for them– just for me.

There is something intrinsically personal in everything one writes. It doesn’t matter how similar or different my life is to the characters or worlds I’m creating. There’s always just that lingering essence of me in it, the nuance with which only I create. If I’m being honest, I’m not comfortable with people getting a glimpse into my mind’s eye. Maybe not everyone sees it that way, but some people pick up on minute details– the little things. Someone out there would see every hint of me in that piece I created, and I’m afraid of that. Everyone has insecurities, complexities, and secrets. I need these qualities for my writing. Without them, I hardly know where to begin. With them, I simply write for no one.

Often I wish I could produce a work of fiction, or even non-fiction, that didn’t ooze with my deepest philosophies and heart-decay. I have tried and failed. The mundane doesn’t spark my intrigue. Detaching myself from characters is easy enough, but detaching myself from the tone and emotion of my prose is impossible. To write something less personal would bore me, and if I don’t care who reads it anyway, why write it at all? So I write from my core. My dark side. My inner self. There’s good and bad in there, I suppose. Isn’t there a little of everything in all of us?

If you’re reading this, congratulations on being the lucky minority! You, my friend, are one of the few people looking into a rare spyglass– peering in on my life.