A Lasting Impact

When writing, two of the most important things to consider are who you’re writing for and why you’re writing in the first place. Or at least that’s what James Miller in The Real World Reader tells us. Now I do agree with Miller on certain points. Academic writing? He’s right. Texting a friend a funny meme that reminded you of them? That’s where I start to seperate from Miller. 

Knowing your audience is great and important when you’re trying to convince them of something or showing a piece of work to the public, but when you text a friend there isn’t as much of a need to think through your actions before hitting send. If they don’t understand what you’ve sent them or take it in a wrong way, you have the chance to explain. You have the ability to go back and fix what went wrong in the process of communication. Miller would have you attempt to avoid this by never sending a thoughtless message in your life. Now I don’t know about anyone else, but I personally don’t like to think about things before I do them. I’m impulsive and spontaneous and basically someone that adds to the chaos of the universe. 

However, despite my being an agent of chaos, there are times when I recognize that thinking through the writing process is a good idea. During those times, Miller’s advice is, as much as I don’t want to admit it, very useful. I’m not the type of person to write persuasive essays or newspaper articles or presentations with which to convince my superiors to trust me and my ideas, but I am the type of person to write creative fiction. Queer fiction specifically. I write short stories, poetry, and I’ve got a novel or two in the works as well, that all have a central theme of “I’m tired of only seeing cishet characters in the media I consume”. When I write these stories of mine, I may not actively think about my audience and purpose in writing them, but when I look back it’s oh so very clear. 

I want more queer fiction. I want to give queer people an opportunity to see themselves in a work of fiction that doesn’t paint them as comic relief or kill them off. I want to show that being queer isn’t just a skinny white dude making out with another skinny white dude. Queer people aren’t just white and they’re not just skinny and they are not just gay. They’re as diverse as the rest of the population, but if you only see the media that’s already out there it doesn’t feel like that. I may be one person, but I want to change the idea that the only acceptable queer people to show in media are twinky white dudes that die at the end. I want to make people happy. 

That’s my purpose. 

I write for the people who don’t get to see themselves in media or literature. I write for the people who’ve been told their whole lives that they’re an abomination or who’ve only heard their identity used as a slur. I write for the people that don’t feel valid or attractive or loved because they don’t get to see themselves being that way in the media they consume. I write for the people that make up this world and don’t even know how wonderful they make it because society has always told them they’ve ruined it.  

That’s my audience. 

I may not have always known I was gay, but I have always known I was a writer. However, one author in particular inspired me to share my work with others and attempt to change the world with my writing. Christopher Paulini, author of The Inheritance Cycle, or as most people know the books, Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr, and Inheritance. Paulini published the 464 page book Eragon when he was nineteen. Nineteen! And it’s full to the brim of all the things I loved as a kid. Dragons mostly, but also swords and magic and, surprisingly enough, politics. Even though I didn’t quite understand what politics were when I was ten, I was fascinated by how complex every decision Nasuada made was and how entrenched Eragon became with the promises he made.  

I recently reread the whole series, and I won’t say that I know for certain what Paulini’s purpose was in publishing or what his target audience was, but I was pleasantly surprised that a book I loved when I was ten, still holds up a decade later. The intended audience could have been ten year olds who can never get enough of magic and dragons, but it could just have easily been intended for kids in college who miss the magic of their childhood and are now old enough to understand all of the complex politics that litter the plot. As a reader, I was never bored. Paulini managed to capture my attention at multiple stages of my life and spend hours turning pages, laughing along with the characters, and hoping that despite everything, there might be hope for a happy ending. 

I can’t say for sure that I know what Paulini wished to accomplish with his writing Eragon, but as a writer myself, I wonder if it was just to share with the world what he wanted to see in it. Maybe his purpose was to make his reader feel something. I may not have known what all of the emotions that exist were when I was ten, but when I read Eragon I felt at least five emotions all the time. I felt even more when I read Brisingr and Inheritance. In Brisingr Eragon forges his own sword and that made me yearn for a sword when I didn’t even know what yearning was. This feeling has stayed with me my entire life, so if that was the goal for Paulini then boy oh boy did he succeed. 

This story inspired me to write. It inspired me to create. To try to make people feel something with my writing. And I think that even if that wasn’t a goal that Paulini had, it’s pretty admirable that he managed to accomplish it and have it hold up through the test of time. I may not be writing in the same genre anymore, but I hope that one day my writing inspires someone, just as Christopher Paulini inspired me, all those years ago.