When you write, you are the tree.

Just recently got an email from someone about WriteField. Basically the email said, "I mostly just wanted to say thanks, 'cause your tips in WriteField are great."

It caught me completely by surprise. I sat there and stared at the message, which came from someone I'd never heard from before and from whom I may never hear again, and I realized six months have gone by.

Six months! Ryan. I'm sorry, man.

I didn't think anyone noticed WriteField. Honestly. It never generated a heck of a lot of email. I didn't think anyone really groked it or paid attention. I was plugging away pretty consistently for a while there, hoping it would catch on and be understood, but after awhile it felt like banging my head against a wall. I evaluated my life and saw a lot of things that needed my attention more than this and, hell, there's only 24 hours in a day.

I admit it. I'm vain. Selfish. I need an audience. Otherwise I'm just talking to myself, and I can do that offline. I mean, I don't need a column in Diarist.Net if no one's reading it. It's pointless to write if no one's reading.

Well, that's what I thought. Just like sometimes you're sitting there at your computer or with your private paper diary in your hand wondering, what's the point? Why write if no one is ever going to read it? I know you've asked that before too. At one time or another we all do.

A long time ago, when I still wrote in my own online journal and I still struggled daily and screamed at the rooftops and churned out roughly five hundred words a day, I told myself the audience didn't matter. What mattered was just to write. Just to get it out of my system and spilled on the paper.

If someone happens by and reads it, great. If someone doesn't, great. At least I spoke to the cosmos. At least I said my piece. At least I shook my hand at the tempest and let it know just how I felt, even though it was going to storm through me anyway.

And over time my opinion has changed repeatedly. An audience does matter. An audience does not matter. Sometimes it's required. Sometimes it's not. The audience is the most important thing. The audience is not important at all. Community makes an online journal special. Interactivity with the audience just gets in your way as a writer.

I experimented with theories regarding audiences and online daily writing as if I were some scientist contemplating an hypothesis. One theory doesn't work so I move to another, or try an older theory again but in a different way.

I've been at this for years. There is no answer.

If a tree falls in the middle of the forest, it may or may not make a sound. Maybe the tree sounded beautiful when it fell, or sounded terrible. Maybe it looked breathtaking as it fell, or maybe it looked ugly or clumsy or stupid. Maybe someone noticed and maybe someone didn't. Maybe just one person saw it, heard it, appreciated it.

However, regardless whether or not someone witnessed it, the tree fell.

That large garbage bin you passed by the other day which smelled so wretched. The mannequin with the fancy clothes you loved to look at but wouldn't be caught dead wearing. That dish on the menu that made you lick your lips but you didn't dare order. The person you walked by who smelled nice and almost caused you to glance over your shoulder.

The river in the valley. The flower in the meadow. The kitten in the corner. The rock at your feet. The word that's on the tip of your tongue at the moment you are grasping for it. Are these things there for you. Are you there for these things? If they make a sound, do you hear them? If you are not there, do they not make a sound?

That mountain miles away is breathtaking and majestic and godlike and awe-inspiring whether or not you get up off your ass to go and experience it. It will still be there, until something comes along to make it go away. Erosion. Plate tectonics. A meteor from outer space. Does it matter what? No. Until something comes to change it, it will remain there.

It's not waiting for you. You must choose to experience it, to find peace or joy or horror or boredom in it.

The mountain will be there regardless. The tree will fall regardless. Your words should stand regardless. Regardless of whether or not someone comes by to read them.

However, if you don't put them up, they will not be there to be seen. Just as if a book is not published, it can't be purchased or read. If the library doesn't put the book on the shelf, someone can't take it down from the shelf.

That stupid old adage about a tree in a forest not being heard if there's no one there? It isn't about the tree. It's about the people who may or may not be listening. And the tree can only fall in the forest if it is there in the first place. If it's not even there, then no one can contemplate whether or not it ever made a sound.

This isn't about me. I'm just the tree.