Write Like No One Will Ever Read It

 By Dixon Kinqade

A blank page is a canvas. Words are paint. No need to hold back. No need for restraint. Let words dance across the page, like actors performing on a verbal stage.

The best writing advice I have ever encountered is this. "Write like no one will ever read it." It sounds like a paradox. We write, after all, to be read. We draft essays and stories and memos so that someone, somewhere, will take our words in.

Yet the moment we imagine that reader too clearly, something in us tightens. We smooth the rough edges. We trim the odd thought. We speak to an audience instead of from a place. The advice works because it undoes that tightening. It does not mean that we should write carelessly or that we should stop caring about craft. It means we should write as if the only person in the room is the one doing the thinking. When no one is watching, we tell the truth.

What it really means is permission. Permission to be messy, to digress, to say the thing that feels too personal or too illicit. Permission to follow a thought all the way to its end instead of cutting it short because it might bore, shock, or offend. The imagined reader is a critic. He sits in the back of your mind with his arms crossed. He has expectations. He has taste. He will judge.

As long as he is there, you are performing. You are choosing words to please, impress, or at least not disappoint. Writing like no one will ever read it means writing as if that critic has left the room. What remains is you and the page and the thought that wants to get out. That is when writing becomes discovery instead of display.

It also implies a shift in where you put your attention. Most bad writing comes from worrying about the wrong thing. We worry about how we sound. We worry about whether we are smart enough, funny enough, or serious enough. We worry about the reader's reaction before we have given them anything to react to.

The advice redirects you. Put your attention on the idea. On the scene. On the feeling you are trying to name. Follow it. Run it down. Get it right for yourself first. If you do that, the reader will feel the difference. Honesty has a texture. So does performance. People can tell.

So how do you actually do it? How do you sit down and write as if no one will ever read it when you know, in the back of your mind, that someone might?

Start with the door closed. Literally or figuratively. Do not write in a shared document that others can see. Do not write with the intention of posting or sending in the next hour. Give yourself a buffer between the act of writing and the act of sharing. That buffer is where the private voice lives. If you can extend it to a day, a week, even indefinitely. The longer the gap, the easier it is to forget the audience and sink into the work.

Write to one person who will never judge you. Some people use a diary. Some writers envision an old friend or a younger version of themselves. The point is to have a listener who feels safe. Not a crowd. Not "the reader". One person who already gets you. That one person you don't need to impress. When you write to that person, your inner critic tends to relax. You explain less. You assume more. You write what you actually think.

Set a timer and forbid yourself from filtering or editing your thoughts. For ten or twenty minutes, your only job is to put words on the page. No going back to fix a sentence. No deleting the awkward part. No wondering if it is good enough. This is not about producing a final draft. It is about producing raw material without the critic in the room. You can shape it later. First, you have to have something to shape. Speed and a strict no-editing rule keep the inner critic from catching up.

Ask yourself what you are afraid to say. What are you afraid to reveal? What are you afraid to share? What are you afraid to think? What are you hiding? What don't you want others to know?

Frequently, the best story is the one you've been avoiding. The one that feels too direct, too vulnerable, too odd, too shameful, too taboo and forbidden. When you write like no one will ever read it, you give yourself permission to write that thought anyway. You can always cut it later. But you cannot use what you never wrote. So put it down. See how it looks. Often, it is the sentence that makes the rest of the piece come alive.

Finally, separate the phases. Writing and revising are different jobs. When you are writing, your only job is to get the thought out. When you revise, then you can put that reader back in the room. You can trim, clarify, make it fit for an audience. If you try to do both at once, you will end up doing neither well. The advice "write like no one will ever read it" applies to the first phase. It is not a philosophy for the whole process. It is the condition under which the best raw material gets onto the page.

The goal is not to stay private forever. It is to write from a private place so that what you eventually share has weight. When you write for an audience from the start, you often end up with something that sounds like everyone else. When you write as if no one will ever read it, you end up with something that could only have come from you. That is what readers are actually looking for. Not polish and perfection. A voice that sounds like a person thinking, in real time, on the page. That's what this advice is for.