WHAT IS THE POINT OF PUBLISHING YOUR WORK? by Noah Hawkes

The body of works that is the entirety of human writing serves as a sort of collective consciousness. It documents all of our history, whether that is literally writing about historical events, biographies, or memoirs about one specific person, diaries of thoughts, feelings, events on a smaller, local scale, poetry, fiction, and ideas that document the mindsets and creativity of individuals... This is also the same for other forms of documentation, such as art, music, architecture, etc.

Whether you publish or not, you are adding to the collective consciousness of people, of the world. When you create, whether you show others or never let it see the light of day, you contribute to the body that is all of us.

I think that that can be daunting, especially if your aim is to be seen by others. How do you get your voice heard through the cacophony? It's easy to feel that your writing doesn't matter when you compare it to the writing that did make it big.

In the end, all work will get forgotten, destroyed, faded from the collective memory, no matter how famous it got. But that doesn't mean the writing has held no influence, or that it didn't matter, or contributed nothing, or was a waste of time. You were compelled to write it, maybe a few were compelled to read it, and no matter how little you thought about it, returned to it, enjoyed it, it made an impact, and it is carried within you and those that read it, who each in turn influence other people, who write their own words or speak in whatever art form that suits them.

Each work will disappear from collective memory, but each work will invisibly influence people for the rest of humanity's existence.

Whether you publish or not, your work matters, your personal history matters, you matter. If just one person reads your writing, your words will ripple through them, in big or small ways, and by writing in the first place you have added to the universe, which was not incomplete before, but that you have nonetheless made more whole anyhow.