Message in a bottle

The Hotpot | January 2026 | By Lisanne

25.1

How to create something unique and personal that lasts and speaks to people, without conforming too much to what we think the audience is going to appreciate?

It’s the ultimate challenge for writers, and it’s the artist’s job to get into the very heart of that question.

Writing is like a message in a bottle thrown into the sea.

It’s never clear where it arrives, who picks it up, or whether it sinks silently to the seabed.

Writer Kurt Vonnegut wrote once that a writer should use the time of a total stranger in such a way that the reader does not feel the time is wasted.

I believe in that statement because almost anyone can vent, blurt out thoughts and feelings, and express themselves in one form or another.

But to communicate is a whole other thing.

To communicate successfully, you have to desire some form of connection. You have to care, not only about writing but also about being heard – which involves considering what the audience cares about.

Unlike the self-absorbed expressor, the communicator not only wants her audience to understand what she is trying to say, but is also willing to work to make this happen.

However, the eagerness to please yields little admiration. Oscar Wilde once warned that artists should never pay attention to the public at all.

I think the real challenge for writers lives in the tension between those two ideas:

to honor the reader’s time without bending ourselves into something meaningless.

At its best, the writing is unique and sparks a conversation.

At its worst, it has lost its creativity and merely functions as a colorless whole that appeals to no one, including ourselves.

Writing for an audience, instead of to an audience means sacrificing the gift that’s distinctively ours.

So where does this leave us?

In order to create something meaningful and unique, the counterintuitive but really necessary thing is to detach from the outside world first, and to articulate what genuinely moves us, unsettles us, excites us, or refuses to leave us alone.

In the end, it’s this specific excitement that flows into the work that will make it stand out.

And maybe that’s the real point of the message in the bottle.

In order to create something meaningful, we must first make pleasing ourselves–not others–a habit, so that if the message in a bottle drifts unnoticed or unappreciated, the act of creating it was still worth the journey.

Thanks for reading! The question of today:

If you are a creator, at what stage—if any—do you consciously think about your audience?

Let me know in the comments!

Footnote

• Kurt Vonnegut in the introduction of Bagombo Snuff Box. Part of the 8 tips he gave for writing a good story.
• Oscar Wilde in his 1891 essay The Soul of Man Under Socialism.

Curious to see more reflections like this? Click through to see the rest of the series on creativity. I’d love to hear what resonates with you.