The person you should always write for is yourself. But Amanda, I hear you say, you’re wrong! Haven’t you ever heard anyone talk about a target audience? I can’t write for me! I have to write for my target audience!
To that I say: you’re half right. You do have to have a target audience, and it’s important that your target audience enjoys the book you’re writing. But when you write for a target audience, that audience won’t get your book until after the book is done. After you’ve written the book, revised it, got it critiqued, beta read, edited, and picked up by an agent and publisher if you’re going the traditional route: only after all that will your target audience actually read your book.
And not to be a downer, but sometimes that might not ever happen. I’m not saying to be a pessimist or to not believe in your own writing- because you should always believe in your own writing- but you have no guarantee that your book will end up in the hands of your target audience. We like to hope that it will, but we have no guarantee that it’ll happen.
Who do we have a guarantee will experience our book? Us. The writer.
You are the only person you know for absolute sure will experience your book. Life is unpredictable. You never know who will read your book until they’ve read it. If you write your book for someone else, they might not read it. And even if they do, they won’t be able to enjoy it until you’ve spent hundreds of hours doing the work required for it.
Do you really want to put hundreds of hours of work into something that will only get pay off at the end, if you happen to be lucky enough to have a member of your target audience read it and enjoy it?
For me, I’d rather write the book that I like, and worry about my target audience when I’m revising and prepping for publication. If I don’t write my book for me, I don’t finish it. Period.
Now I’m not saying you’re going to enjoy every minute of writing your book. Newsflash: you’re probably not. Especially if you’re a beginner.
But the book itself should give you some level of enjoyment over the course of writing it.
Toni Morrison once said, “If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” And that advice is absolutely true here.
You don’t have to love every single scene in your book. The story might require, say a fight scene, and you’re not a huge fan of fight scenes. But at the end of the day, the finished product should be one that you would enjoy as a reader. That way, you’re always have one reader that enjoys your book: You!
Commenti