Writers are a curious lot. We create in relative isolation, imagining worlds inside our heads and then struggling to translate those worlds onto the page. And then we toss those stories out into the real world and hope that other people will read them and enjoy them as much as we do.

When other people do enjoy them, we celebrate. We give a little internal cheer and think “Hey, all that struggle was worth it.”

But when other people do not enjoy our stories? When they hate our stories? Or — worse — when our stories are ignored? Lost in the noise of modern life? Lost amidst other people’s stories that somehow attract readers while ours languish? Well, somehow that’s worse. The effort, the struggle, the painful editing and rearranging of words to make them just right … was all for nothing.

No one noticed.

That hurts. We crave that audience. Want nothing more than to share our stories, have them recognized and appreciated and loved. Want other people to get lost in our worlds just as we were.

But that doesn’t always happen. Many many many times, that doesn’t happen. We can throw hundreds or even thousands of dollars into marketing and social media and gorgeous covers, spend hours and hours pimping our books when we could rather be writing new ones. And a few people here and there might discover our stories. Maybe they’ll read our books and enjoy them, or even love them.

But the ultimate truth, hard though it may be to accept, is that we have no control over who reads our stories and who enjoys them. In the end, we are writing for an audience of one.

You are writing for you, and no one else.

I am writing for me, and no one else.

The only audience I can be absolutely certain will enjoy my story is me.

There is a liberating effect to that realization. I am not writing to please an accountant in Peoria, or a plumber in Boston, or a teacher in Chicago. I cannot write for them because I have no control over their tastes, desires, needs, wants, or financial status. I cannot write to please strangers. If I do, the story will no longer be mine. I will twist it round and round and turn it into something else in a desperate bid to fit someone else’s idea of what that story should be. Maybe. But I might get it wrong. I might misread this potential audience of strangers, and then what? I’m left with a story that I don’t love, ignored by people who have no interest in reading it.

I cannot write for that audience. I can only write for me.

[Written by Rebecca Buchanan.]