One of the first things I was taught, as a writer, is that you have to determine who your audience is — who do you write for?

Recently, I have read quite a couple of blogs and participated in a writers’ discussion group which now teach that, as a writer, you should write for yourself.

Who is right?

As I see it, it needs to be both:  1) You have to write for yourself, in so far as, you won’t want to share your writing with anyone if you don’t like it, and 2) You have to determine a larger audience if your goal is to sell your writing.

To determine your audience, you need to be able to answer some basic, simple questions:

1)  What age range do you feel your writing is best suited for?

2)  Will your writing include themes, language or scenes that are acceptable                      for and appealing to that age group?

That’s really all you need to determine to decide upon your audience.  However, because you will be writing from your personal worldview, (this will be expanded upon in my next post), there are some things you will also have to determine and realize.  My next post will explain this better, as I discuss worldview and what that means for your writing.