What is Audience?

How do I think of audience when creating art? To answer simply, I don’t.

My writing is for me, myself, and I. It is not for other people. I write because it helps me understand myself. I often struggle with concepts, with emotions, with obsessive contemplation or imagination or stress. I find myself reliving situations for days, weeks, sometimes years in an effort to understand why something happened the way it did, what it meant, and how it has impacted my growth and development as a human being, my psyche and behavior. Writing is selfish. Writing is necessary. Whether it be poetry, fiction, journaling, blogging, or just throwing words on a page.

If I do indeed consider an audience, it is almost always one of two: myself, either past or future, or my coming generations of children and grandchildren. I want to know myself, know what makes me tick. I want them to know these mechanics as well, to have some written record of me. Perhaps this, too, is selfish, because I often find myself wishing I had something of the type from my parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, so on and so forth. I want to remember my life, and for my life to be remembered by those who will care what happened.

Despite the fact that I do not write for a grander purpose, I am not opposed to letting others read, comment upon, critique, and analyze my writing, so long as it is creative. Therefore, if I generate a poem or story, I will push it upon the world in some way and leave it open to interpretation by the masses. I crave approval, but more than that, I crave attention and validation, as I believe most writers probably do. I want people to acknowledge my mind, my life, and say something about it. Hence my participation in creative writing workshops, collaboration with peers, and communities such as theprose.com. See my genius, tell me what you think. They may not realize the story behind it, but I do. I can take that feedback, the message they find, the symbolism, and use it to my advantage. I have done so before and will continue to do so for years to come. Most of the time, audience reaction is productive and valuable, whether positive or negative. 

So I say let them speak, and I will listen.

To be entirely honest, though, I’m not sure I could write for any audience but myself. For example, I long to write a novel, and am in fact taking a class for this project next fall. However, I struggle to find a topic, a plot that would be of any interest to others. I have multitudes of ideas, but how can I execute them in a way that others will enjoy? Audience is my Everest. Audience is my downfall. Audience is my writer’s block.

I must admit, regardless, that audience is a massively significant part of writing, even for individuals such as myself who tremble at the thought of any audience outside themselves. Writing for an audience of one is terrifying in its own way, because it means delving into yourself and discovering all the nooks and crannies, the paradoxes, the hypocrisy, the darkness and the light, the fears and the hopes (which are equally mystifying and frightening). It means you know you, and who really wants to know their own depths? Isn’t that why we love, why we have friends? Ah, but this is a thing of beauty. Writing for a greater audience, be it a friend, a family member, or the world, is in another way terrifying. What if they mock you? What if they shame and shun you? Ah, but what if you become the next Stephen King, Nicholas Sparks, John Green, J.K. Rowling, or V.C. Andrews? Or, if you aspire to a different level of perceived greatness: Emerson, Thoreau, Stevens, O’Conner, Woolf, Bradstreet?

Audience is both everything and nothing. I write to feel. I write to understand. I write to make others feel and understand. I write to make myself care, to make others care. I write for myself. I write for my world. The bigger question is not what does audience mean and how does it impact you, but this: which audience matters most? If we, as writers, are being realistic, we have infinitesimal audiences for every word. So which one do you care most about? Which one is most quintessential for you? Determine this, and you will determine why you truly write.