Writing: Social or Individual?

Writing isn’t just simply a social practice or an individual one. It depends on what you are writing and what you then proceed to do with the writing. Writing in some sort of journal or diary is an individual practice for the most part. Sometimes though, the writing in the journal is about something that happened with other people and in that case, the physical process of writing is an individual practice but the piece of writing itself is social, whether you wrote it alone or not.

Overall writing is, I think, a social practice. All of the ideas you come up with are inspired by past experiences and anything you have read. These inspirations are mostly sub-conscious happenings. Everything that has made you who you are changes your writing and causes you to focus more on certain topics.

Sharing the writing, by being published or even just sharing it with friends, makes it more obviously a social practice.