Who should you write your books for? The answer is simple. If you want to entertain as many as possible, you should write the books for . . . yourself.
Writing for Yourself is Selfless
Writing for yourself is the most selfless act you can perform, for when you allow your presence in a text, you offer others the most unique thing you have: you. It might sound like a paradox, but what other people want – no matter what kind of writing you do, no matter what kind of communication you perform – is to feel the person behind it all. That’s in our genes. We want to know people, not institutions.
Writing for Yourself Makes You Less Vulnerable
When you write for yourself, you become less vulnerable. It’s another paradox. You might think that allowing yourself in a text opens you up for criticism – that people who don’t like the text, don’t like you. But that’s perfect. Only you have to like you. When you trust yourself, you stop staying up late at night fiddling with a text, afraid of what people will say when they see it. You stop focusing on reaching such a general audience that you remove everything personal from your work. When trying to perform such an impossible act of satisfying others, there’s no longer any life in your writing and that’s the worst thing that can happen – the most dangerous thing a writer can experience. Creating text without life for too long will kill you as a writer. It will kill your work. Your favorite discipline has become a day job, an institution, which was the pit you wanted to avoid in the first place.
Don’t head for that pit. Be yourself. Love what you do. Let people reject or embrace you. Make it easy for them. You will find new friends and lose the ones who would never have appreciated your work in the first place. You will get a much closer relationship with your readers and with yourself.