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The Effects of Other People on Our Words

How, then, do other people affect the way we put out words? I mean to suggest by the four preceding images -- all images of getting attention from other people -- that the answer is complicated. But also that we can arrive at an answer if we work our way through the complexity. Sometimes what strikes me first is that other people make it harder for us to put out words. The larger the audience, the more nervous we are apt to be. Imagine, for example, that you are talking to someone and having no particular difficulty finding words or saying what you mean. But then your listener, for some reason you can't fathom, bends forward and looks at you more closely and listens more intensely. That's liable to make you examine your words more carefully. Then someone else comes into the room and starts listening, too. Then others, some of whom you don't know. In this progression of increased attention, most people get increasingly nervous. The more we have people listening to us -- unless we have complete assurance of their support -- the more we are liable to wonder how they will see us and whether they might find us wrong, foolish, unlikable. The child hides behind his mother's leg when given a burst of full attention. It is a natural response. But this very example of the child reminds us that of course it can work the other way. After you give the child some time to feel safer with the increased attention, he will begin to pour forth a stream of words. More attention will call up a limitless fund of things he wants to tell you: "Do you know what? . . . Do you know what? . . . Do you know what? . . ." And the other story about getting more and more attention as you talk can be retold to show how increased attention helps you put out words. Perhaps, for example, you start to tell about your vacation and the other person listens with merely polite attention. Your account is a bit perfunctory. But, then, as you start to tell about how your child got hurt, the other person, a parent too, leans forward and gets involved in the story and this leads you to tell more about how you felt, perhaps even to feel again some of the upset feelings from the accident. When listeners really want to hear what we have to say, they seem to suck more words out of us. When listeners are bored or distracted, it is hard to talk clearly and well. And even though larger audiences may seem inherently scary, they sometimes serve to give more support and make talking easier. Most of us have had the experience of three or four friends listening intently to us in such a way that we end up finding more words and being more eloquent than usual. People such as speakers, actors, or teachers who address groups know the peculiar power that can come when an audience is really with you. It gives a kind of excitement-plus-support that is exhilarating and leads you to find unexpected words and power. Thus most good, experienced performers are not calm and unruffled before performances. They let themselves feel excitement and even anxiety because they know what to do with these emotions. They don't blot out awareness of the audience; indeed, they probably have more awareness of the audience than a terrified beginner. They come to meet the audience and get the audience to come to meet them, and out of this transaction they build a performance they could not otherwise achieve. By the same token, if you are physically tired or else bored with a topic, an audience can get you up so you can concentrate again and invest yourself in it. In fact, though the attention of other people can make us more anxious, we wouldn't speak at all without that attention. We need other people not just to teach us language but also to listen to us and reply. The wild child brought up only by animals in the woods does not speak at all. Any "back to basics" movement in the teaching of writing needs to start by ensuring each child the most basic thing of all: a real audience for his written words-an audience that really listens and takes the interchange seriously. We can better understand, then, the effects of other people on our writing if we distinguish between a dangerous audience and a safe audience. Whether an audience is one or the other is partly an objective matter: are your readers a bunch of hostile critics just itching for you to make a mistake, or are they a crowd of friends or fans who look forward to enjoying what you have to say and won't hold anything against you even if you have difficulties? But safety and danger are partly subjective matters, too. Some are terrified no matter how friendly the audience is, while others are not intimidated even by sharks. Either way, however, you can almost always tell whether an audience is functioning as a safe one or a dangerous one for you at a given moment. You can tell whether the audience is helping or hindering you in your efforts to put out-words. (Occasionally it takes you a little while to wake up to the effects of an audience: "Hey, I've been struggling to write this memo for three hours now and hardly gotten anywhere. I thought it would be easy. Oh, yes, that's why I'm stuck. I have to send a copy to -- and he's been bothering me for the last six months.") Most of us have had a teacher or reader who made us want to write -- and unfortunately, also, the opposite kind. The safe reader gave us a kind of attention that somehow made us feel respected, taken seriously, and supported, and, as a result, we usually ended up having more and better things to say than we had expected. Because I call him safe I don't mean to say such a reader is always gentle and soft. Some safe readers are tough and demanding but they listen hard, they respect us, they want to hear what we have to say, and in this way they bring out our best skills in writing. The unsafe reader makes us feel that we don't count or that our words are irrelevant and makes it harder than usual for us not only to think of things to write, but also to put down on paper what we already have in mind. Audiences, then, are the source of the attention we need if we are to be social animals at all, but they are also the source of danger. By paying attention to us, they can help us to find more to say, but that very same attention holds out the possibility that they'll find our words wrong, dumb, boring, or laughable. (The special power of the one-to-one relationship -- the tête-á0-tÊte -- is that it is probably the easiest way to maximize attention and minimize danger. Two listeners have more attention and support to give, but one person's wholehearted attention is easier to get and to hold.) Sometimes fear of an audience is great enough that we would happily sacrifice attention altogether just to get rid of danger. And that is exactly what it is possible to do in writing if not in the rest of life. Freewriting gives us relief from the danger of readers and attention. When people first do freewriting they usually experience an immediate release from pressure. It doesn't matter what words come out. In the absence of danger they find new words, thoughts, feelings, and tones of voice they didn't know they had. Most of all, they discover that the process of writing doesn't have to be an ordeal. The basic idea, then, is a simple one: when an audience is safe you put out words more easily, when it is dangerous you find it harder. But this simple idea fits the complexities of actual writing experiences better if I add two slight complications. First, a dangerous audience can inhibit not only the quantity of your words but also their quality. That is, if you are trying to talk to a dangerous audience, instead of finding yourself mixed up or tongue-tied or unable to think of anything to say, you may find yourself chattering away nervously, unable to stop but also unable to say anything important. If, for example, I have to speak to a person or group that I find difficult, I might adopt a voice that hides my real voice and speak with, say, a tinny jolliness or an inauthentic pompousness. If, by contrast, I am with someone I trust, I may say less than usual but talk from my depths -- sometimes even revealing more than I wish I had revealed. And so it can occasionally happen that we feel an audience is safe that invites us to keep on chattering happily in a gear that is habitual and protective. And we occasionally feel scared or threatened by an audience that invites words from the center. Thus, in the third and fourth images at the start of this chapter, I felt safer in the presence of fairly close friends who snapped me back into my habitual, protected self and helped me to forget about the scary inner feelings, and I felt threatened by the attention of really close friends who seemed to suck difficult words and feelings to the surface. Second, we must distinguish between real audience and audience in the head. That is, no matter who the actual people are for whom we intend these particular words, we are usually influenced by people we carry around inside our heads. We have a habitual way of relating to readers-in-general, and we have some particular memories of past audiences in our heads which can get triggered by present circumstances. (For example, some people always "talk down" no Matter whom they are talking to; and some people, whenever they deal with an authority figure, revert to the tone they used toward the junior high school assistant principal who kept them after school.) When you are writing it is usually easier to notice the effect of the actual audience than the effect of the audience in your head. For example, you will quickly notice if a particular report is unusually hard to write because the reader is someone who is currently giving you a hard time. Or perhaps a story or poem is a joy to write because you are writing it as a gift for someone you love. Because the audience in your head is invisible yet always there, you may be unaware of it and of its subtle effects. If you are scared of speaking or writing to most audiences even when they are supportive and caring, you are probably responding to a dangerous audience you carry around in your head all the time (a dangerous audience that probably derives from some real audiences in the past that were dangerous for you). If there's one particular person who flusters you as audience even though you know he is supportive and caring -- perhaps a particular administrator or teacher -- you can assume that he must somehow trigger your reaction to a dangerous audience in your head. The audience in our head usually affects us more when we write than when we speak. When we speak, the real audience is right there dominating our attention and drowning out other audiences. When we write, however, all audiences are in the head, even the real audience. In the dark of the brain a real audience is easily trampled by an insistent past audience. To summarize, we can get a pretty good understanding of how other people affect our writing if we look at these three factors: Is the audience safe or dangerous? Does it affect quantity or quality of words? How much are we being affected by the real audience for these words and how much by some other audience we carry around in our heads? Dangerous Audience. When you experience an audience as dangerous: (a) it may make you so anxious that you actually cannot write at all; or (b) it may make you merely nervous, preoccupied with mistakes you might make, unable to find words naturally and smoothly, and, hence, unable to concentrate easily on your thoughts; or (c) it may not inhibit words or thoughts at all, but lead you into a protective voice which makes you feel safer, but drains your language of power. Safe Audience. When, on the other hand, you experience an audience as safe or eliciting, it opens you out: you think of more ideas, feelings and images; words come more easily. But on a few occasions a safe audience can threaten you by making you feel things inside you that you'd rather not feel.Safe Nonaudience. When you write for no one -- for the wastebasket, for yourself, for the process itself -- words often come pouring out of you. You find new voices, sounds, and tones.Dangerous Nonaudience. But when you feel you have no real audience at all -- no one who cares what is on your mind either immediately or in the future -- you are likely to drift into dull muteness: to feel as though you have nothing to say, nothing on your mind, no thoughts to share. Advice

•	If you are having a harder than usual time writing something, it may well be because the audience is dangerous for you or is triggering a reaction to a dangerous audience inside you. You can usually improve the situation by changing your audience for your early writing. Either ignore audience altogether and do lots of fast freewriting (as in the loop writing process). Or do your early writing to some very different audience that brings out your best. For example you can address a draft of your technical report to your loved one -- ven permitting yourself some of the fun and games your make-believe audience inspires. You will have more to say -even on the technical subject -- you will get more life into the words, and you will produce your draft more quickly than if you had written to the difficult audience. You'll then find it's not hard quickly to revise your peculiar first draft to fit the real audience -getting rid of what's inappropriate, but saving the good ideas and the juice. Since the pervasive effects of audience in the head are trickier (and more common in writing than speaking) the remaining pieces of advice are aimed at dealing with them.
•	Are you almost always frozen or blocked in your writing? Fear of audience-in-general is probably holding you back. Even if your actual audience is sweet and loving, you are probably still reacting in your head to past audiences who were not. Do lots of freewriting for no audience at all and experiment with a safe audience.
Do you get the writing done but find yourself always selfconscious, always worrying about whether your writing is good enough, always worrying about mistakes? This, too, probably comes from fear of a dangerous audience you carry around in your head. Lots of freewriting without an audience will help here tooand experiments with a safe audience.

Do you find yourself trapped in a voice that you sense is somehow fake or unreal? Perhaps stiff or too cute or fake-sincere? Freewriting will help -- that is, the use of a safe non-audience. The safety encourages real voice. But it may not help as much as sharing your writing with an actual audience that is safe. For if you already write fluently, but your voice lacks power, you may freewrite hour after hour -- weeks and even months -- in a gear that is, in the last analysis, defensive. Your safe, habitual, and fluent writing is the path of least resistance. And, in a sense, your writing works just fine: it's easy for you to get your ideas onto paper. But your lack of voice makes it hard for you to get your ideas into readers. A safe audience can help you break out of your protective but ineffective voice. Most people lack a safe audience or at least do not make use of one they could use; for example, a friend who simply likes to read and appreciates what you have written. But if you look you can find one or more people who want to provide this support for each other. Even though the absence of audience removes objective danger, only the presence of live supportive readers gives you positive safety.

Is your writing almost always too complicated and elaborate? Too many twists and turns in your train of thought, too many qualifications in your argument? This is a frequent problem for writers in the academic world -- both students and teachers. It is probably because you are locked into some kind of combat with an audience. As you write you are wrestling with those critical readersthose piercing intelligences who are just waiting to pounce on a careless mistake or a naíve assumption. You are busy shooting down every possible objection before it gets a chance to take flight. As a result you can never permit yourself simply, calmly, and in a friendly way just to say what is on your mind. Force yourself to write as if you were writing to friends. Explain what's on your mind as though your readers -- is it possible? -- are just itching for a chance to understand and enjoy what you are say

ing. Have the courage to stop wrestling with the foe and give gifts to allies. You will surprise yourself at how much easier it is to write -- and how your argument often turns out more persuasive even to adversaries. And it needn't be make-believe: write early drafts to friends who really will read you this way.

Are you wallowing in safety? Just words and words, pages and pages, but none with focus or electricity? You may need more real audience for your writing. Perhaps even a dangerous audience. It will help you get more up for your writing, help you make the writing process a bit more of a performance in the good sense of the word. Those feelings of excitement, anxiety, perhaps embarrassment: you can't have the attention of readers without them. And if you must write to a difficult audience (in fact or in your head), don't forget about the possibilities of confronting them: forcing yourself to look them in the eye, to make contact with the enemy, instead of taking refuge in safety. You probably have to get mad, but you may thereby find an unexpected source of strong and coherent words. This is what happened to me on that occasion when I was having such a hard time lecturing.

A child cannot learn to speak unless he has other people around him (and it seems to work best if they are loving people). Yet after he has learned language he can speak and write in total solitude. There is a profound principle of learning here: we can learn to do alone what at first we could do only with others. From this principle I derive my final item of advice and sum up this whole matter of safe and dangerous audiences. We should use an audience-and especially the support of a loving audience -- as much as we can and as long as it helps. But the goal should be to move toward the condition where we don't necessarily need it in order to speak or write well. Probably for a long time we will be hurt by people's disapproval, ridicule, or indifference to what we write. It is sensible to avoid dangerous audiences if they hold us back in the work of learning to improve our writing. But we need to learn to write what is true and what needs saying. even if the whole world is scandalized. We need to learn eventually to find in ourselves the support which -- perhaps for a long time -- we must seek openly from others.

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