On Writing: Audience

I’m reading a good book on writing—or maybe it’s just about living. I bought it off the internet because I had checked it out of the library and I quickly wanted to start marking in it, not a good thing to do to a library book, but a good indication that there’s some noteworthy stuff inside. The title: The Zen of Proposal Writing.

Here’s something I read this morning that prompted new thoughts and an “aha moment”: Your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person—and write to that one (John Steinbeck).

I read that and instantly became aware of something that had been holding back my writing. I was stifled in my writing because I was trying to write to everybody and we already know we can’t please everybody, so why bother? So, I didn’t. But maybe I can if I pick out one person to write to.

Now here’s my new dilemma: do I write to the person who gets me or do I write to the one who’s sitting there kinda squinting in half-pain because their brain is working so hard and work to explain it because it’s so rewarding when the pained look leaves and the light comes on? Or maybe I keep them both in mind and write certain things to the one and other things to the other. Did you get that or does your brain hurt?