Talking via email with a fellow blogger this week — something about intended humour gone unnoticed, if not entirely awry — led to a general conversation about how hard it is to predict where readers will go with any given blog.
Seth Godin’s piece a few days later breaks open this observation in a new way, as he so often does.
You might not need more exposure to the new.
Instead, it might pay to re-see what’s already around you.
Indeed, I expect this is true for all of us, time to time. So here’s to re-seeing what’s all around us.
…and you are doing that! D
Barbara – Thank you. Sometimes.
I certainly agree that it’s impossible to predict how what one writes will be interpreted by readers. Turns out there are little multiple interpretations, often quite widely diverse. Sometimes I’m tempted to ask, “How could you possibly miss what I meant?”
Tom
Tom – When everyone goes sideways on me, I can even end up wondering what I did mean!
When I write my columns, I sometimes (not always) pass them to Joan to read, and if she’s unsure, I sometimes use another friend for feedback. Typically, they get riled (anything from mildly upset to livid) over something that I didn’t think I had said at all. I’ve given up protesting that “That wasn’t what I said!” to recognizing that if they can take that meaning from my words, I need to revise those words.
Perhaps we writers need a new maxim: “The reader is always right.” Because if that’s what they read into it, that’s what they read into it.
I’m not sure what that has to do with Seth’s wisdom.
Jim T
Jim T – I agree that the more we think about our readers, the better we’ll (all) do. And yet we each bring things to our interactions, including those with the written word, that the transmitter can’t even guess at, much less take responsibility for. For sure, “reading in” is inevitable and never wrong. But it doesn’t hurt to ask whether a given reading-in is more likely unique than typical. We’re gonna spill some . . .