Why write when none will read?
Writing is a craft, a practice, and a discipline; it is not beholden to the gaze of any audience. Its value does not reside in who will read it, but in the act itself. The term “essay” derives from the French essayer: to attempt, to try. At its essence, an essay is not a performance, nor a display to be applauded; it is a proving ground. It is a space wherein thought is tested, examined, and, at times, found wanting. Indeed, writing exists foremost to assemble and order the knowledge, observation, and experience of the author. Every tome, treatise, or epic that endures began thus: as a tentative attempt, a first step into unknown territory, a scribble on a blank page that later became doctrine, manuscript, or production. Writing, long before it communicates, is cognition given form.
To write is to slow the mind, to seize the fleeting and slippery currents of thought and lay them in sequence. The mind, left unchecked, tolerates contradictions, skips details, and allows ideas to drift unexamined. On the page, every notion must justify itself, every inference must stand or fall. Writing exposes gaps in understanding that reflection alone might conceal. And when no other eyes bear witness, this exposure is safe. The private page becomes a laboratory rather than a stage, a ground for trial, error, and discovery. In such circumstances, writing unread may be the purest and most honest form of all.
There is a fallacy embedded in the very question of readership: that writing’s merit is contingent upon those who might see it. This error treats writing as commodity rather than instrument. Yet the most essential uses of writing are often private, instrumental, and exploratory. Notes, journals, and drafts exist not to persuade others, but to persuade the author: to clarify understanding, to illuminate ideas, to reveal that which remains obscured. Even when never shared, such writing has already accomplished its purpose.
Writing unobserved resists the tyranny of performance. An imagined audience can guide, but it can also constrain. When writing becomes performance, rough edges are shaved, voice is muted, and conclusions are grasped prematurely. Private writing permits uncertainty to endure. It allows the author to pose foolish questions, to follow strange associations, and to contradict themselves. These are not failings, but evidence of thought in motion.
Throughout history, this private function of writing has always existed alongside its public one. Scientists fill notebooks with calculations that lead nowhere; philosophers draft arguments that are later abandoned; artists sketch visions that never become finished works. These efforts are not wasted; they are the scaffolding upon which mastery is built. That which reaches publication is but the visible tip of a vast, unseen corpus. To write only for guaranteed spectators would be to sever the very conditions under which excellence emerges.
There is a quieter, yet no less vital, reason to write unread words: memory is fallible, fleeting, and unreliable. Writing preserves not only what we thought, but how we thought at a given moment. To revisit one’s own words is to confront the self across time, to witness growth, error, and transformation. Even if no other eye beholds the text, the author alone benefits. Writing becomes a dialogue with the self, extended across hours, days, and years: a guide, a mirror, and a record.
Finally, writing without concern for readership is an act of resistance. It refuses the modern compulsion to optimize, to broadcast, to craft solely for engagement or metrics. It asserts that meaning does not require validation. Some thoughts exist purely to be worked through, to be tested, to be understood; not consumed.
So why write when none will read? Because writing is not a message sent outward, but a method turned inward. It is an attempt, an essai, to comprehend. And that attempt possesses value far beyond the measure of audience, a value inherent in the very act of endeavor.