Why we write and who we write for The Irish author Colin Toibin offered some interesting thoughts in a magazine interview last year, especially these:
Writing "is like playing tennis. If you tried to think too much, you'd hit the ball out...If you're writing a story, it's the same problem if you start thinking, What does the story mean? Stop that! Get an image. Follow an object."
I like his advice. Sometimes I don't wrestle with words, sentences, and paragraphs so much as the question, Who am I writing this for? It's when I play that mind game that I end up trying to or wanting to write to please the readers when I really ought to write to please myself. I'm not denying that books appeal to a certain genre, fantasy, adventure, romance, whatever. A writer certainly knows when setting out which type of reader his/her writing will appeal to. I certainly know who my writing is directed at. But within that, I try to stay true to myself in how my writing unfolds. At the end of every chapter, I always ask myself: Do I like this, rather than would my wife or my neighbor or my barber like this. If the answer is no I don't like this, I rewrite until the answer is yes. Bottom line, I don't care what the potential readers think, which can be emancipating in the confidence that if I like it, my audience will too.
Listen to Colin Toibin again. "Follow the thing to see where it will take you--or follow the rhythm. But don't try to wrest meaning from it. If you think too much you're (in trouble)."
