Online Audience and Writers' Response

I am thinking about the commitment to continue writing once a writer has started something - how to make it something that continues to happen. Doing it everyday seems like a compulsion, or even a trap. something an addict does in order to feel better. On my bus trips, I've been pretty regular about pulling out my clipboard and going at it. But Why? I don't have to. To pass the time, to avoid boredom, to avoid people. Yes, all of these work as reasons. In this case, writing is a dodge to avoid something (more) unpleasant. When I sat down today, I had a question of "why do this?" Does anybody really like to write, enjoy it? A colleague has claimed that she needs to write every day. But from what I know, she is like Mark. It appears to be a combination of derived pleasure and shame avoidance. When I started the blog, I imagined my ready audience of readers. Notably, all whom I imagined were in positions that could not (I imagined) pose a threat. Then in a recent email, a student mentioned that she had told this colleague about my blog. I considered the impact, imagined the colleague being impressed by it. Well, sure enough the next time I wrote, that same colleague materialized and I became more careful about my spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Audience, prefigured by the writer, remains an uninvestigated, interesting place to work. Iser is the one who has pioneered this area. It is time to read the Ong that Barbara. sent me as audience is construed as a fiction.

 

So what is audience within digital composing? How has the imagined reader become manifest in teh online, affinity group transactions? These are questions that Kathleen might be able to answer in her dissertation study (if that is what she wants). the big piece of this is that the teacher is always the imagined audience in school based writing (is this really true?) Teachers are the authoritative audience. Like my colleague did for me, the looming constructed teacher must impinge on the very composing processes of classroom writing. But online, no teacher! Do writers then look for authority? Do readers offer corrective feedback, perseverate on accuracy, or do writers imagine that they will? What happens to this virtual relationship when they do so?

 

Here is a chance to look at regularly occuring, self motivated writing that is potentially not supervised by an authority who is contractually obligated to evaluate. So, what flows in to fill the vaccuum left by the vacated teacher? In what ways do writers re-construct and authoritative audience? Or if not, how do writers conceptualize their readers? How do they imagine them physically, rhetorically? Can they read (discern) their responding readers for the things they write, or the way that they write?