Several million tracks of experience find their ways into my subconscious every nanosecond. Curiosity invites my consciousness to bear witness to life, objects, nature, etc., materials that are coded into my DNA and later come alive in a tapestry of narratives.
For me, writing happens involuntarily. It feels like the urge to give birth. It must come out of one’s system otherwise it’s impossible to move on to the next thing. This is what I’m experiencing at present, so I have to rearrange my competing priorities to write this piece. This is the feeling I get for most of my writing . . . a feeling of urgency, of a story screaming to be told, but without an audience in mind.
Come to think of it, maybe I do have an audience. This assignment for 12th Street asked the editorial staff to consider “Who is your audience?” So here, I’m writing for my audience because I’ve been asked to do so.
Up until now, it never occurred to me that I was writing to someone–but I guess the answer is “yes.” I’ve cultivated an international community of people who like my work, and the feedback on my social media platforms confirms this. That, I suppose, is a good thing for “us” writers. Social media makes it possible to identify what interests our audience so that we can give them more of that “thing” and maybe eventually, we’ll be able to monetize our labor of love.
I think most writers write because it’s in our DNA and not for a specific audience and readers who can relate to our work would eventually become our audience, to whom we’d grateful if they reward our work by buying our books.