Another chicken and egg debate, with more questions than answers

As a ‘new writer’ what is, or should be, the prime consideration when starting out on a new project? Are we writing to please the publisher or the reading public? And who should we be trying to please?

This question was posed recently in several on-line writing groups and, not surprisingly, the variety of answers was as diverse as the writing styles seen around the walls of the boys toilets of any secondary school in Britain.

We have to please the publisher, they cried, else how will anyone ever get to read our work?
We have to please the reader, for they are the ones who will buy our books, cried others.

Agreed, we have to please both publisher and reader in the end...but whatever happened to writing just to please ourselves?

Surely if we write what is in our hearts and minds, what pleases us, what inspires us, this will ultimately produce a more solid piece of writing than that which is produced under pressure and under the constraints and myths of what publishers want ... When in fact nobody, not even the publishers themselves, truly know what they want...until they see it.