Who Do I Write For?
“Who do you write for? This question has been troubling me today, so I’m asking passing ships who love to write … Sounds like you do, correct me if I missed my cue :)…”
Mental Mists sent this comment my way in my last entry, and I couldn’t help but answer in a long explanation.
This question is a little vague. It can be answered in two ways, the first regarding my readers and the second regarding my identity as a writer. I write for people around my reading level and maybe a bit lower. My audience is anyone that appreciates magical realism, urban fantasy, or whatever the hell it’s being called these days. I write for the conscious late teen and early twenty-year-old. I like to ask questions through my works and hope the reader can find an answer. I never seek to provide that answer outright. My works are merely fishbowls.
That said, I write for myself. I write because I love it, not to please someone else. I think that’s extremely important to consider when asking this question. I think that this may be the best reason or person to write for. If you don’t love sitting at your computer and opening the writing vein, then why are you doing it at all? It is my love that will hopefully make my writing succeed outside of me as it already does within me.
I hope some of that made sense.
Level One Writer 
Based on your description, I’m not your target audience. 🙂
I found the fishbowl idea particularly significant, because I have come to realize I try to provide answers all the time through my writing instead of asking questions to let the reader decide… And I have no clear audience in mind other than a hopeful “everybody” which isnt realistic… Hopefully my perspective will mature with practice/time 🙂
Thanks a lot for sharing your ideas!!
~MM
I must agree with you Jake, I write for almost the exact same reason. It makes no sense to me why we even have target audiences. We should just write and people should have target books. Why do we have to conform our writing styles into something else because we want a specific demographic? I don’t care who reads my work as long as I like what I have written.