Writing for Who?

Hello Strangers,


One of the first rules of writing, and for publishing your writing, is to know your audience. A random search of my in-house library reveals only one book that specifically mentions the word 'audience' in its index - Orson Scott Card's How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy (which is also, by the way, perhaps the best reference on the genre I've yet read and highly recommend it). So, who is my audience here?

I have no clue. Not really having any framework to hang these random posts on negates the assumptive value a genre provides for an audience, and the family and friends I intended it for don't know about it. Oops. Too much time spent talking about other things over the holidays! From what little I know of blogging, I'd guess my audience to be in one of two categories: the hit-or-miss 'I'm looking for something entertaining to read' types or the 'there is something specific I'm looking for' types, who make use of the search function in their quests.

Even though 'audience' may not be a specified category in an index, every book about writing makes it clear that, in order for a work to marketable, there should be a market in mind.

Who are you writing for? I write for myself. I write because I enjoy listening to what my readers' comment on; hearing the characters and story re-lived in our conversations, as if these were real people, real events, and they want to know more, to experience more, tells me that something has touched them. I am not the best of orators. I stumble over my phone etiquette, use rehearsed sales pitches, and my sense of timing leaves my family in stitches - but not because of the joke itself. What I can do is write and I enjoy it. I hear the rhythum of words strung along in the mind like kites on a breeze...

Here's a glib musing: several months back I ran into a comment that writers should know their audiences so well as to practically spoon feed them what they want written. I know, I know ... my paraphrasing has a lot to be said for but the discussion that ensued so riled my feathers! Do readers today really not want to think about what they read? Has television overridden our innate curiosity? Are readers so sensitive that we, as writers, have to beware of stepping on pride and ego with the way in which something is phrased, even at the cost of the idea that is being presented? That says alot about the value placed on the topic. Should we sacrifice knowledge or ideas or experience for the 'what if' factor in society today? 'What if' he's offended at this word, what if she's offended at the way that might come across... Do you want to be 'spoonfed'?

I don't believe it. I was a reader long before I was a writer. Good writing survives ... just about everything. Words have weight and value. Good writing can offend without a good reader closing the cover. Good writing, by it's nature, is not offensive, although the ideas contained therein may be.

To anyone interested in the sociological nature of writing in the American culture and its interpretation, I recommend Cultural Literacy, by E. D. Hirsch, Jr.

Meanwhile, I'm going to keep writing ...