Writing about Oneself

When a writer writes about himself, it’s often not conceit but a search for material in a natural, accessible place. And he may be looking at himself not “as himself” but as an observer, as he might look at another. So we may be dealing with two people: the writer and his “subject”. This is especially likely if he is writing in third person, which is assumed to be narrated by a person or persona separate from the characters in the story; but it is also true, if more subtle, when he writes in first person. One might think first person writing is always subjective. But even in first person telling there’s a voice, a narrator, describing the acts and thoughts of a character. What is written is not quite the same as what a person actually “says to himself” when he thinks, feels, speaks and acts. Those thoughts are usually not sentences but words and phrases, structures short of sentences, and the prose writer typically writes in coherent sentences in order to communicate sensibly. (If the writer is writing lyric poetry, however, he might approach the less structured syntax of actual thoughts, of words and short phrases we say to ourselves short of speech.)
My point is that any writer can step back from himself and regard himself as one person regards another, and there’s nothing self-absorbed in doing that. It’s natural, it’s the nearest of subjects, and it’s perfectly normal to do. So one need not fret in journal writing that he is being too self-centered. Many famous writings are about the author.