Who are you writing for?

A few years ago, I was listening to a book called The Artist's Way. It's about how to unblock yourself creatively. I didn't particularly see myself as creatively blocked, but my best friend said it changed his life, so I gave it a shot.

Listening to it in bits and pieces during drives to the store and walks around my neighborhood, I realized something. Despite having written hundreds of thousands of pages of text for my various companies over the years, I’ve generally struggled to publish my own work under my own name.

Listening to this book about the creative process, it struck me that all of that experience was actually making things worse. All of my marketing practice made it harder for me to write on my own.

As a marketer, I’d trained myself to get very clear about the audience and develop specific messaging that would resonate with them. Effective business writing is selfless. It’s not about you… it’s about your customer.

But Artist's Way made me realize that art is the opposite: it’s not about other people or what they think. Or at least it can’t start there. It requires reflection and self-work to get out of your own way. Art, I believe, is fundamentally expressive.

It turns out… being a really good product marketer was strangling my ability to be a consistent writer. By obsessing over what other people were looking for, I made it very hard for myself to hear my own voice or what I wanted to say.

This is how I realized that there are two types of writing.

Functional Writing vs. Expressive Writing

One of the reasons it's hard to write well is that so much of the advice is directly conflicting. This is because of these two types of writing, which I call Functional Writing and Expressive Writing. They're completely different in terms of motivation and approach, and the sooner you learn to distinguish between the two, the quicker you'll be able to improve at one or both.

The fundamental distinction between these two types starts with the audience: Who are you writing for? Functional writing is about communicating a message to someone else. Expressive writing is about verbalizing something for yourself. This difference trickles down into an enormous range of implications.

Functional Writing

Writing for other people is a communication exercise that perpetually balances efficiency vs. efficacy. This kind of writing should be as lean as possible. "Good writing" in this context has mostly to do with discipline and focus and clarity of thinking. The clearer you can be on your intended outcome and the expected audience, the more you can refine a carefully sharpened arrow of a message that nails the target.

Editing is the key, here. Minimalism is the mantra, and if you can say it in fewer words, you should.

Personal style is generally a barrier.

In fact, if it can be conveyed in a list of bullets, it probably should be.

If you add anything beyond the skeleton, it's for a utilitarian purpose of increasing the odds of success. Don't trade any efficiency unless it's for the purpose of efficacy.

And while this all sounds very cold and ruthless, it's actually a form of service—functional writing is a lot of work, but the objective is a valuable experience for the person receiving it.

Expressive Writing

Writing for yourself is almost entirely the opposite. The point is not to be efficient or necessarily effective. Having an audience in mind may actually be detrimental, since it will pull your focus toward someone else—what you think they want or need to hear, rather than what you want or need to say.

This is the realm of maximalism and extra detail. Ultimately, this is the space for emotion and feeling. Extraneous context is what brings brilliant expressive writing to life, and what separates it from its functional counterpart. The humor, the asides, the 'this reminds me of' moments.

It relies on the Paradox of Art: Creating something deeply personal and just for yourself is often what leads to works that resonate most broadly.

Squishy boundaries

I find this distinction to be consistently useful. However... the lines between the two types aren't always clear.

Certain types of writing are almost entirely one or the other: Business emails, legislation, instruction manuals are obviously functional writing. Poems, song lyrics, and novels are clearly expressive writing.

But other formats show that there's a spectrum here, and the two modes often blend together.

Movie screenplays come to mind. The warmth and heart and humanity often come together as a result of personal reflection and careful observation. But the medium is fundamentally functional, in the sense that the screenplay has at least two very practical, required audiences before even the viewers: producers/studios, to convince them to make the movie, and directors/actors, to guide the actual creation of the movie. Perhaps the dialogue is expressive and the stage direction is functional, but even beyond that, the lines blur.

Creative copy in advertising is another one. This one seems truly 50/50, since there's such a blatant functional objective (sell the product!) but the source of inspiration seems undeniably expressive.

And the one I've been thinking about a lot, lately: Business articles and essays. Or "thought leadership content," to use the gross common phrase. This one is particularly weird. It seems to come from the intersection of both individuals' desire to express themselves and the experience of their working life, and companies recognizing that "building a relationship with the customers" involves a more human element than the transactional heart of functional communication. So, once again: A bit of expression, a bit of function.

Even this essay: I've been using it to reflect on my own experience with the creative process and given myself the freedom to explore my (sometimes rambling) associations for the related concepts. That's expressive writing. But I also want it to be useful for you. Even as I'm writing this, I'm thinking: "What do they already know? How could my friend apply this, to improve their own writing?"

So, it's a bit of both.

So... what?

If the boundaries aren't clear, what's the point?

Even if many writing formats aren't 100% one or the other, just knowing the distinction has been helpful for me.

So if you're sitting down to write something, ask yourself:

"Who am I writing this for?"

Start there.

If you want to communicate something to someone else, focus intensely on them.

If you're trying to say something that you need to say, you need to focus on yourself.