Writing for an Audience Quotes

The most annoying and full-of-crap thing a writer says is, 'I write only for myself, I don't care if anyone reads it.' A writer without a reader doesn't exist.

I always tell people there's only one trick to writing: You have to write something that people are willing to pay money to read. It doesn't have to be very good, necessarily, but somebody, somewhere, has got to be willing to pay money for it.

I am writing for myself and strangers. This is the only way that I can do it.

Well, I hate it when authors come into a school and they say to kids, 'Write from your heart, only write what you know, and write from your heart.' I hate that because it's useless. I've written over 300 books - not one was written from my heart. Not one. They were all written for an audience, they were all written to entertain a certain audience.

And I've always worked on the principle that if it interests me enough to write about it, then it must interest a lot of other people.

I am sure of this: that no one can write a book which children will like unless he write it for himself first.

I never wrote my books especially for children.

I didn't (and still don't) have comments [in my blog]. It's about simply writing for an audience of One.

When you do a writing job for a studio, one of the things you want to do is satisfy the expectations of your employer. That's a little bit different than when you sit down and write something to satisfy yourself, because then you're the employer.

I believe in books that do not go to a ready-made public. I'm looking for readers I would like to make. To win them, to create readers rather than to give something that readers are expecting. That would bore me to death.

I tend not to think about the reading public at all, or the business, when I'm writing.

I just wrote what I felt like writing since they seemed to sell.

I hadn't ever worked with an 'editor' until I was 26 - although that could be partly chalked up to the MFA vs. NYC thing, where I came up through institutions that encouraged writers to write privately for a long, long time and not sully themselves with concerns about audience or the business side of writing.

A column is a curiously intimate affair. For a start, you know by default that you will have regular readers, so it gives the writer the privilege of continuing a running conversation with them.

I think you become a writer when you stop writing for yourself or your teachers and start thinking about readers.

I have never written for an audience. On the other hand I do not write merely to please myself.

Historical novels are hard to do for the general public for commercial writers like myself.

I think that if you write what you love to read, that will be what your audience wants to read, too.

He who does not expect a million readers should not write a line.

Many children's writers don't have children of their own.

A man really writes for an audience of about ten persons. Of course if others like it, that is clear gain. But if those ten are satisfied, he is content.

Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.

I think any writer is a fool if he doesn't do it for money. There needs to be some kind of incentive in addition to the project. It all goes together. It's fun to sit there and think of characters and get them into action, then be paid for it. I can't believe it when writers tell me 'I don't want to show my work to anybody'.

Those authors who would find many readers, must endeavour to please while they instruct.

I don't like writing with real people in mind.