Who are you writing for?

[AJwrites]

I wanted to ask a question that I’m sure has been asked a lot, “Who are you writing for?”

I published my first book 4 years ago, it was a Christian book and a hybrid and fiction and non fiction, but I knew when I was writing it “I had an audience” with my church and the network I was part of etc.

What I’m writing now is a fantasy story I’ve had in my mind for years and years and I been pondering the “audience” question.

I feel in many ways I’m writing it for me, because it’s been in my head and I would like to see what it might all unfold to look like when it’s extracted and turned into a narrative and living breathing story. But with this genre I don’t have a ready made community I’m writing to or for, it feels like a very different process.

I’m curious, what makes you write these fantasy epics, and who are you writing for…if anyone?

Thanks all,


AJ

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Me. I write because I can't not write. I write because it's the best feeling in the world. And I write to distract. I've got more than a little hypergraphia.

 

[AJwrites]

That’s a fair response!

 

[pmmg]

Thats what the dedication is for, letting someone know you wrote it for them

Which, sadly, I cannot use, cuase it would just make people angry.

I am not sure why I started writing, or what inspired the current tale. It was meant to be a series of short stories, but it just kind of took off. I guess I wanted it told, but now I feel I want it shared. I think there is not much else like it, and it will be important long past my years. Guess we'll see.

 

[Gurkhal]

I also write for myself. I try to write the stories that no one else will write if I don't write them myself.

 

[Mad Swede]

I write for myself. I always have. I started writing for personal reasons, as a way of helping me deal with a personal tragedy. Then I found I couldn't stop writing and now I write because I have to. I can't not write.

 

[Astralai]

I write for myself. It began with a phrase a friend over used and when I was unable to work, thanks to long Covid, I wrote a couple of scenarios around the phrase. Characters in those passages developed lives of their own and I wanted to see what happened next. I have reached the end of their story but I will carry on writing because I discovered I love it.

 

[skip.knox]

I write because I have always done so. But after decades of accomplishing nothing more than a long series of false starts, my goal became: can I finish? Can I take the story ideas I have rolling like clouds in my head and turn them into a complete work that I am not ashamed to have others read. That turned out to be way more work than I would have guessed.

Now my main motivation is, can I make this work? That is, I have a story idea and it seems interesting, but can I turn that into a finished novel (or short story)? Can I make it work?

With self-publishing a horrible second challenge arrives, teeth bared: can I get anyone else to read it? Okay, that's one. Can I get ten to read it? A hundred? Getting readers is an undertaking subsequent to but divorced from that of writing. Two different activities. Two different trades. I neglect the latter because I keep having story ideas and those nourish me, where marketing drains me. It's not that trying to sell--or even merely to advertise--my works isn't interesting. It is. As I said, it's a trade unto itself and that's the problem. I've gone far enough down that road to understand how much time it will require of me, and I don't have that much time to spare.

So I continue to write, mainly to see if I can make it work.

 

[Penpilot]

I write for me, because if I don't, how else am I going to find out what happens in those stories?