Writing should be calling everyone to present-centeredness, to heart--calling us home. 

Judson Jerome, in "Fiction vs Incident" says, "What we expect from fiction is for someone to learn something...Something happens in the course of the fiction..".and the audience infers what has been learned.

Paul Horgan, in Approaches to Writing, says: "No matter how great...a writer's intellectual perception, its expression...will be worth little unless he perceives also through the emotions.  Stark intellectuality is as unacceptable as stark sentimentality."

Writers perform these services for us all; willing themselves to remain slightly outside of life--to observe, to feel, to maintain awareness--in order to bring others there if only for a moment.  As writers, this is their function in the larger community.