Writing Can Cause Masking, But It Doesn’t Have To
Here’s how to avoid it if you are autistic
Being mindful of my audience, and writing as much to that audience as to the Reality that transcends it, is one of the biggest changes I’ve noticed in my approach to writing.
The sentiment that writers should write for their audiences and not for themselves is as common as the number of streets in Atlanta with the name “Peachtree” in them — which, by the way, is 71, and I am pretty sure there are more than 71 articles on Medium expressing this idea.
I find this advice problematic for the autistic writer. Hear me out before you come to any conclusion.
Writing for yourself versus writing for others
The world is filled with harsh spaces where masking is as required to be even semi-successful as it was and is to remain free from COVID-19 at its zenith and beyond. One kind of masking is healthy and can keep you from knocking on Heaven’s Door prematurely; the other is not.
The idea that we should write for others is, to me, a euphemistic way of saying that we should take the temperature in the room, find out what people want to hear, and then help give them affirmations to let them keep their confirmation biases. To write for my audience in this sense, I would first need to meet with many autistic people and talk about how they feel about a particular subject. And then I might find my way onto TikTok and search for an autistic consensus there. Then, my article would pretend that those conclusions are coming from me when they are coming from the consensus of my target audience.
If someone writes this way, they are probably a lousy writer. But they are also masking.
However, beyond our position in a particular piece, it can affect the topics we choose to write about. Again, to do this properly, I have to scan the room around me, figure out the trending topics, and then write about those topics — whether or not they interest me at that particular moment. This, too, is masking.
Writing on this platform is supposed to be a hobby. Yes, it is a hobby that earns you some income, but we are not working for a big corporate mega boss who has researched the readership demographics and what the target audience wants to know. Inquiring minds always want to know, but you can’t always know what that is. The truth is that they want to know what you have to tell them.
If you only write about things you think people will be interested in, it will show in your writing.
This leads us to the question: What does it mean to write for oneself?
After all, if we took “writing for oneself” to the extreme, it could look like a stream-of-consciousness entry in a diary that resembles Morse Code more than a well-written article. There is nothing wrong, of course, with having a diary. But a diary is something we use to communicate our private thoughts, whereas this platform is for posterity and the viewing public.
So, it is unreasonable to say that if we write anything on this platform, we write solely for ourselves.
And if you are writing for money, that is another consideration that factors into your decisions on what to write about. This is, after all, a marketplace where people are competing with one another. I am not unaware of this reality.
Finding the balance
Remember I said earlier that I don’t want spaces like Medium and TikTok to be performative masking platforms for autistic people? Well, to some extent, by limiting our stream-of-consciousness thoughts, they already are. And that’s okay. But I think it is crucial to mitigate any further masking we must do to capture the audience’s attention so that writing itself remains fun, enjoyable, and a continued passion/hobby.
I am under no illusion that my essays are on par with Joyce Carol Oates, James Baldwin, or George Orwell. But my philosophy to writing is as follows:
Some articles will appeal more to some readers than others. Accepting that fact and not feeling like everything you write has to resonate deeply can be incredibly freeing. It takes a lot of pressure off you. For example, I wrote an essay on Jiddu Krishnamurti that I knew would not “do well” as far as applause, etc. But because he is a figure that fascinates me so profoundly, and I believe his philosophy might have some resonance for a few people on the autism spectrum, I chose to write it anyway. There’s an old Jewish saying that whoever has saved one life has saved the world. Similarly, if a single reader has been made aware of a new subject because of something I wrote, this is a profoundly gratifying feeling.
Autistic writers tend to know most of this intuitively because it shows in their writing. The stories I read are wholly authentic and come straight from the heart. But there is so much writing advice as if it is your job to make readers “happy” that I think the idea deserves some pushback.
Our words are not mere vessels for popular sentiment or the transient whims of an audience — even an autistic audience or another targeted group. They are the echoes of our unique perspective, the unvarnished expression of our inner world. In embracing this, we transcend the conventional confines of writing. We are not merely authors; we are guardians of our truths, architects of narratives that may not conform to the prevalent norms but are nonetheless vital and irreplaceable.
To write is not to perform a rehearsed play for an awaiting audience. It is to embark on a journey of self-discovery, where each word penned is a step towards understanding oneself and, in turn, offering that understanding to the world. It is in the act of genuine self-expression that the writer finds freedom — freedom from the expectations of others and freedom to explore the uncharted territories of their own experience.
You need some safe spaces in your life. Many of us are already denied a third-place setting where we can relax, just be, and not have to be overly masked. This platform, where your writing is your world, should be one of those safe spaces.
