Blogger: Wendy Lawton
Who do you write for? We often talk about knowing your audience as a writer and targeting that audience. I have a favorite quote that focuses it even better:
“If you write for God you will reach many men and bring them joy.
If you write for men—you may make some money and you may give someone a little joy and you may make a noise in the world, for a little while.
If you write for yourself you can read what you yourself have written and after ten minutes you will be so disgusted you will wish that you were dead.”
–Thomas Merton, Seeds of Faith
The truth is you need a lot of writing for God with a good dose of writing for your own readers.
It’s not an easy thing to do. I see many a manuscript written to impress a professor or a mentor. Others are carefully written to be acceptable to a critical family. I see children’s manuscripts written to the child the author used to be in the fifties or sixties.
So I have two questions for you. Who do you most often write for? How does one find their true audience. (Of course we don’t need to go into finding God– our true audience, but how do we determine our earthly audience?)