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Inspirations
WRITING YOUR SELF
Imagining the reader
Celia Hunt explores the unconscious and turns your life into literature
Although you may not be fully aware of it, you are always writing for a reader. When you write a letter, the person to whom you are writing will be a constant presence in your mind. When you write a diary, you are addressing an imagined version of yourself, or possibly an absent loved one, or family members who might read the diary in the future. And who you are writing for very much affects the way you write and your sense of who you are as author.
When you engage in creative writing you are likely to work with different imagined readers. You might have a vague sense of a group of people for whom you are writing – women of your own age, perhaps, if you’re writing fiction, or fellow poets if you’re writing poetry. Or you might have in mind an ideal reader based on someone you know or on a writer whose work you admire, who may never actually read your writing but who ‘listens in’ approvingly as you write. Such readers give shape to the space of writing and keep you company in the sometimes difficult process of creation.
In Patricia Duncker’s 1997 novel, Hallucinating Foucault, the painfully tormented Paul Michel is sustained in his writing by what he imagines to be an intimate relationship with the French philosopher Foucault. Though the two have never spoken, Michel believes that they write for each other. Whether this is actually the case is not important; it is the presence of the imaginary Foucault in Michel’s mind that enables him to tolerate his lonely writing life.
There are also imagined readers who inhibit the writing process, inner critics who condemn your words even before they’ve reached the page. These might be remnants of childhood perceptions of teachers or parents or competitive siblings.
Drawing out and giving form to your imagined readers, whether positive or negative, can be helpful. It can also provide material for self-exploration, whether you are working with a therapist or on your own. Here’s the outline of a guided fantasy. It works best if someone reads it out to you, allowing you plenty of time to write your responses:
◊ Close your eyes and imagine your ideal writing room. Where is it? What does it look like? How is it arranged? What are you going to write with? What is the view from your window? Write as much detail as you need to bring this location to life.
◊ Imagine yourself in that space. Breathe deeply and let your thoughts roam freely until a single word or image floats into your thoughts. Hold it in your mind, then write it down and continue to free-write to it for a few minutes uninterruptedly.
◊ As you sit in your writing space, you can feel that there is someone else present. Is it a man or woman? Is it a child? Is it more than one person? Are they sympathetic to your writing or antagonistic? What does it feel like to have this person there? What do you want of this person in relation to your writing? What do they want of you? Write a dialogue between your writer-self and your imagined reader.
SOURCES: For a fuller version of this exercise, see pp.90-93, Hunt and Sampson, Writing: Self and Reflexivity (2006).
CELIA HUNT runs the MA in Creative Writing and Personal Development at Sussex University and is the author of Therapeutic Dimensions of Autobiography in Creative Writing (Jessica Kingsley) and Writing: Self and Reflexivity (with Fiona Sampson, Palgrave Macmillan)
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New Writing
From Issue 31 ◊ Oct/Nov/Dec 2006
CAUTION:
- The exercises in this feature can access memories and feelings that may be challenging or painful. Before you start, do ensure you have supportive friends or family members to talk to if need be.
