Is your writing a 'Letter to the World'? Why? How?

The question of private and public writing is an ongoing debate; surely if you write something down you have to be aware that there is a chance it could end up in the public’s eye, even if you don’t want it to; and once it’s out there you cannot take it back.

John Cheever split his writing throughout his life by writing short stories for publication but also by keeping a journal for himself.  However shortly before he died he gave permission for his journals to be published, blurring the boundaries he had originally created.

Emily Dickinson, on the other hand, has been described as writing ‘without the thought of publication’. She never agreed to her poetry being published posthumously. I wonder how she would have felt when William H. Shurr went through her letters and found ‘new’ poems.

Personally I have a journal, but the thought of someone other than myself reading it scares me; what if they make assumptions about me, not to mention the embarrassment. But with my prose and poetry I can see them as letters to the world. I write to be read, even if that is only by one person.

I believe when you write a letter you put part of yourself inside, you want to show the receiver how you are feeling or what you are experiencing. It is the same when I write, through my style of writing and the subject I am showing the reader a little part of my world.