Write For Yourself, Not Your Audience

Photo from Stock Exchange

“Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.” ~Harlan Ellison

A very common thing that I’ve noticed when reading someone’s work, especially if they upload it to a site (like www.elfwood.com; being my favorite) they oft times read a comment that goes something like this. “Hey, great story, but you should do this!” and then they explain what ‘this’ is. Following this, (not the ‘this’ but this) the author then goes on to include that in their next piece of work.

Don’t do this.

If you write to please everyone in the world, in the end you won’t have anything to show. I have written poems or stories that I absolutely love and the first person I show them to after finishing says “That sucked.” As a human, your first thought would be to ask them why, then go off to make the changes to please them. The problem with this is what one person likes, someone else will hate. So, ignore this initial reaction. First and foremost, write for yourself and no one else. If you don’t like what you’re writing, scrap it. I couldn’t even begin to count the number of stories or poems I started writing only to delete everything in a fit of rage.

The hardest thing to overcome when learning to write for yourself is just that. Writing for yourself. So, how do you do this? Well, one way is to never show off your work, but what’s the fun in that? If you do decide to upload or print your work and show it to other people keep one thing in mind. This simple phrase will be the only thing you ever need. “It doesn’t matter what they say.” That’s it. That’s all there is to it. It doesn’t matter what anyone says about your writing, as long as you enjoy it.

Did you find this article helpful? Have your own advice? Comment and Subscribe!

Descriptive Writing

Photo from Stock Exchange

“The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.”  ~Samuel Johnson

Writing good descriptions is, in my opinion, one of the most important aspects of writing a short story or novel. Without descriptions, the reader won’t be able to visualize where the characters are or what they’re doing. Take this example of poor description.

“Corrie walked into the house. Her eyes scanned the expensive looking rooms, hoping to find something worth stealing. Seeing nothing, she moved toward another door along the far wall.”

Now, that little phrase has some merit in its own right, it tells us the house is probably expensive and owned by a rather wealthy fellow.  But beyond that, it doesn’t really tell us any more. Here’s an example of better descriptive writing.