In last year's Aliventures survey, one person wrote, "Everything I write is personal. What do I do with that? I'm not sure any of it is of value to anyone but me and my close friends."

Plenty of writers work on highly personal projects. Obviously, a memoir is intensely personal ... but other genres can be too. Many first novels are at least somewhat autobiographical. 

These works can find a wide audience, though: they're not just of interest to the author and the author's loved ones. Readers who live hundreds or thousands of miles away can still find themselves drawn in by the author's own experiences and thoughts.

Your writing will never resonate with everyone ... but the personal details you put in can make it real, vivid, and valuable.

Types of Writing That May Never Find a Large Audience

Some kinds of writing are so very specific to our own time and situation in life that we may feel they're really not suited to a wider audience than a tiny group of friends or family. For instance:

• A personal diary or journal that records day-to-day events in your life and your thoughts about them. (This may potentially be so private that it has an audience of one: you!)
• Letters to family and friends where you're sharing ideas, advice, or thoughts that might mean little or nothing to someone else.
• A written family history, or perhaps the history of a small local area.

These may never find a large audience, but that doesn't mean they're not worth writing.

My longest-running writing project is two journals (handwritten in a series of notebooks) for my two children. I started these when my eldest was less than a year and a half old and she’s now turned 11. My youngest, now 9, was just a bump at the start of his journal. 

I wanted to record all the little everyday details – things that would easily be blurred over the passing of the years – with a couple of sentences each day. I don’t imagine these journals will ever be of interest to anyone except for me and my children, but they still feel special and valuable.

Four Options to Consider for Your Personal Writing

So what should you do with your personal writing? It's entirely up to you, but as I see it, these are four good options to consider:

#1: Keep Your Writing for Yourself (or a Close Circle)

You can keep your writing for just your own eyes, or perhaps share it with a small circle of people who are close to you. This is a perfectly valid option! You may want to have your writing printed by a print-on-demand service, perhaps so you can give copies as gifts to family members.

#2: Publish Excerpts of Your Personal Writing

Maybe you're writing something of broader appeal, and you want to include excerpts from your most personal writing. For instance, Joanna Penn used passages from her diary in her book The Successful Author Mindset.

#3: Aim to Get Your Personal Writing Published

If you've written a memoir (or something similar to one!) then you could shape and edit it, and get feedback from beta readers, just like you might do with any project. There's definitely a market out there for memoirs ... and while it's harder to get published if you're not already well-known in some way, it's not impossible.

#4: Turn Your Personal Writing Into Personal Essays

Another great option is to use parts of what you've written, shaping them into coherent and complete personal essays. A number of more literary newspapers and magazines publish these: The Write Life has a good list here of magazines and websites publishing personal essays.

Whatever you decide to do with your writing (or even if you decide to do nothing at all with it), remember that your writing itself has value ... regardless of whether it gets published or finds a mass audience. Writing something for just yourself, or just a tiny number of people, can be immensely meaningful and valuable.