Found this piece written years ago; thought I’d start a new category, see how it goes.

It is distinctly different than asking who I write for, but ultimately, one wonders if the two questions are somewhat interrelated. In the sense that who I write for, influences where I write from, and vice versa. Say, I write for myself, for my own pleasure, in this public platform, without heed nor care as to how others might view me. Which, even if I’m able to lie through my teeth in that way, if the reader is to believe me, then I’d seriously ask you to consider or reconsider how gullible you really are. Without doubt self-censorship immediately applies itself; what I choose to divulge or not divulge becomes a conscious choice even if it started out being an unconscious one.

Writers manipulate. Be it emotions or words or memories. Words chosen carefully, that strings at one’s innermost thoughts and emotions as you read the memories of the one who writes. But, whose memory? Is it important to uncover if the author writes as a feminist, as a gay/lesbian/bisexual/heteorosexual, as an ethnic minority using the language skills of the majority (that, bear in mind, isn’t the majority because of its numbers, but rather is the majority because of historical-political reasons), as a fan, as a left-wing liberal, right-wing conservative or apathetic anarchist? Will it assure us – readers, in general – that the voice is authentic and not merely manipulating us? Even better, what gives us the position to question the authenticity of the voice? Knowledge? Whose knowledge?

Only writers themselves will be able to tell where it is they write from: be it from the Pandora’s Box that no one else knows about, or from the fringe of ‘psychosis’ that plagues hypergraphiacs. And I’m not sure if it’s in their prerogative to justify to their readers where their compulsion to write comes from. Which brings me to this: why am I questioning myself now?