Writing Can Be Mine

I'm going to have to disagree with the assertion that "writing can be seen, not as an individual personalized achievement, but as a series of strands in a larger social-spatial textual fabric (the network)." I believe that writing can be seen at times as an individual personalized achievement, not strands but a whole.

I would agree that at times, writing acts as a thread through society, pulling things together. But other times, experience that is individual to the writer allows him to produce work that is private, that is precious, and that is whole. This work does not have to be shared with the rest of the world for it to have value. Every time the writer looks at it, it is a part of himself.

If all writing was simply a strand tied to another strand, tied to another strand and so on, we would be left with a blur of ideas. No one could find the beginning of the string, everything would become one and no one could truly appreciate the work of the individual. When a writer pours himself into a work, it is his and if he chooses to share it, he can then tie a piece of it into the network.

As for the idea that because experience is shared and we are all influenced by each other that our work is the product of the collective mind and conscious, I would say that not all experience is shared. Not all experience is common to man. What happens in my mind and my world can produce a completely different result than the man next to me experiencing the very same. It is the individual pieces of ourselves, the private worlds within, that shape who we are and what our writing is. Without the individual, writing will disappear. Without the individual, there are no strands to tie to the network.

What can be said then is that both the individual and the network exist, though not always in the same space. People can choose whether to link into the network, but this is by no means mandatory or inevitable. Some writing will never be anything but a note tucked away in a drawer that brings daily comfort to the author. Some writing will take on a life of its own and become a piece of each of us. Some of it will do both, retaining the individual while maintaining the connection. Nothing is for certain and all things are in flux.