This is The Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 7: Who Is My Audience & How Do I Write For Them?

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Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps aspiring writers to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and to write every day. I am your host, Sarah Werner, and I want to start off this week’s episode by talking a little bit about perfectionism. I am a perfectionist. I’m one of those people who when you go into a job interview and they say, Oh, what are your biggest strengths? Oh, I’m good at communication. And I know how to write for the web and for creative endeavors and… I’m not interviewing for you so I will stop that now. But then they ask you for your weaknesses. And I often feel like that list should be equally as long, because nobody is perfect, which is ironic coming from a perfectionist. But my point is, when they ask me for my weaknesses, the first one I will always say is I am a perfectionist.

And of course, during a job interview, we all skew that to a more positive light. So, oh, my biggest weakness? Oh, I’m a perfectionist and my standards are super high. And all I do is churn out really good work. And that’s a weakness because sometimes it takes longer to produce better work. Or whatever it is, however you put your spin on perfectionism. But no matter how well you spin it, perfectionism can be one of the worst enemies that you are likely to face in your writing. I know this because I’ve been a perfectionist my entire life. I’m guilty of editing while I write, instead of being willing to put a crappy first draft out there. I’m guilty of never finishing many projects because I can’t make them perfect enough. Stop me when this sounds familiar. I mean, heck, I can’t even start some projects because I know in my heart they will not turn out as perfectly as I’m imagining that they will.

So you see here, perfectionism is a tremendous weakness in a writer and it can hinder you from moving forward with what could possibly, potentially be a very fine work. So I work now in the website industry, I do content strategy for websites. I do online marketing. And the problem is, these projects eventually have to be finished, they have to go out the door, whether I’m ready to part with them or not, whether they are up to my extremely exacting standards or not. This has been a challenge for me. It is definitely been something that I’ve been forced to wrestle with. Because in my industry we have a saying, which is, done is better than perfect. And do you know what, there is something to that. While I don’t have the satisfaction of having every single project I work on turn out to be super perfect. I do have the satisfaction of actually finishing something and it is a good feeling.

Because you’ve accomplished something, but you can also move on to something else with a lighter spirit. So why am I talking to you about perfectionism? Well, I don’t even know if I should admit this to you, but I will, because I’m that kind of person. I didn’t like the podcast episode I recorded last week. I didn’t. In fact, I hated it. And after I finished recording it, it was incredibly late, and I was incredibly tired and burned out from a long day. I’m sure you know what that feels like. And I was sitting here in my chair, staring bleary eyed at the screen of my computer. You may have noticed that episode six, last week’s podcast, was only about 24 minutes long instead of the usual half hour. That’s because I edited out a lot of stuff.

And if I would’ve had my way, I would’ve continued editing it for the next several days and probably distilled it down to one perfect word or one perfect spot of silence, because that’s how a perfectionist works. So I edited out this opening chunk that I didn’t like. It was a kind of bitter sounding rant. And I didn’t realize when I was recording it, that it sounded bitter. But it was bitter. And I wasn’t proud of what I had recorded. Because while it was still truthful and while it was still genuine and while it was still my voice and my words, it wasn’t a perfect aspect of myself that I wanted to share with you. Because let’s face it, as much as we want to be perfect, a lot of perfectionism is simply convincing other people that we’re perfect. And I wanted so bad to convince you that I am perfect, even though you know I’m not. I know I’m not.

So I trimmed the episode down to 24 minutes. I took out the angry bitter rant, to preserve the more lighthearted positive feel of the show. And I seriously wrestled for hours. And then for the next couple of days afterward, with the question of, should I scratch that episode and re-record? I think that’s something all creative types will understand, whether you are a writer or an architect or a designer or a painter or someone who creates jewelry to sell on Etsy. That the creative process is so much more than the end product. So those earrings that you made, the people who buy those from your Etsy store don’t necessarily think about the sketches you went through to design them, the trip to the craft store to purchase beads and other materials, the classes that you took. I obviously don’t make jewelry, but I’m making some assumptions here.

The people who buy your jewelry just to see the jewelry, they don’t see all the toil. They don’t see all the strategy and the process of the art that went into creating it. It’s the same thing with podcasting, and it’s the same thing with writing. I think it was Hemingway who said very famously that, “For every 100 pages of manuscript I write, I throw away 99.” A lot of the times the finished product only represents about 1% or 10% or 15% of the effort you actually put in. I remember every year we used to go and visit my aunt Diane in Washington, D.C. And we would go to the National Gallery where there’s all sorts of incredible works of art. And my sister, Rachel, was looking at a Mark Rothko painting and she said, “Well, I could do that.” And you know what? She probably could have. Mark Rothko was a very famous abstract expressionist.

And the painting that my sister was looking at was, I think the top half of the canvas was orange and the bottom half of the canvas was red, and that was all. And of course she could have done something like that. Heck, I can do something like that. But that’s not what the painting is about. I will leave art history and art criticism to the art historians and the artistic critics. But there’s so much more than what you can see. There’s technique, there’s history, there’s motive and intent. There’s color, there’s shape, there’s expertise, there’s emotion. It’s so easy to separate the product from the process, especially if none of your blood, sweat and tears went into it. But resist that temptation. Creating art, creating jewelry, creating podcasts, creating manuscripts, writing novels, this isn’t art. And art is about the process and the product. So I won’t tell you not to rush through the process to get to the product.

I won’t tell you that, because I’m not necessarily certain how true that is. But what I will tell you, is not to devalue the process. Whether you take it fast or slow, whether it’s easy or fraught with peril and emotion, as so many works of art are, make sure that you’re really experiencing it and that you are learning and growing from those experiences. So let’s bring this back full circle. I recorded a podcast, and for you it may be, you wrote a short piece of fiction, you wrote a poem, you wrote the first 35 chapters in a novel that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, and you hate it. And you want to stop. And you want to fix it. And yeah, you can fix it. That’s what editing is for. But keep going, work through the process, done is better than perfect.

For me, the lesson was, Sarah your time is very limited. You work full time. You have your family to take care of. You’re involved in a million things. You’ve been getting up at 5:00 AM to get time to yourself. When on earth are you going to sit down and outline and record and edit a replacement podcast? And I didn’t want to face the answer, because in a way it meant that I was trapped with giving you a substandard product. I really hate referring to artistic endeavors as products, but as the lingo goes, so do I, I suppose. But then I remembered, done is better than perfect. If I let myself re-record this episode, then I am going to start re-recording every episode. And I do not have time for that. And so I decided to take a risk, and share something with you that I wasn’t especially super happy with or proud of.

I asked my friend, Peter, who has served as a podcasting mentor for me. So in my show notes, which I type up after I’m done recording, should I apologize? Should I say, you guys I’m so sorry this was not a great podcast episode I will try better next time? And he told me in his… Peter is one of the calmest people I know, ever. So he told me in his almost excruciatingly and wonderfully calm voice. “No, Sarah. I’m glad you released the episode. Use this as an opportunity for growth. Do something that you’re not comfortable with because that’s how we grow. Show people who you are, don’t hide behind that barrier of perfection because it’s not genuine.” And so I wrote my show notes and I didn’t apologize. You can go look for yourself. But it did get me thinking about something that plagues us all as writers, as creative people.

And that is fear and doubt. Fear that we won’t be what we want to be, that we won’t be perfect, that other people won’t see us as perfect and flawless and successful and enviable. And doubt, doubt of our own self worth, doubt of our own abilities and talents and skills, doubt of our purpose. It’s easy to produce something that’s not really great and to spend the next 10 years cursing yourself and saying, is this really what I should be doing? Maybe I would be better at ice fishing or drag racing or teaching geometry to high school students. But don’t think that. I mean, of course, you’re free to pursue other career options if you want. But I think that the reason you’re listening to this podcast is that you are a writer, and you’ve recognized that within yourself and it is an indelible thing.

So I hope that you are able to take something away from my struggle. I hope that you find the courage to go through that bottom drawer of your filing cabinet, and to take out some of those stories that you wrote years ago and decided weren’t good enough to submit. Maybe give it a try, maybe submit one of those stories or poems to a literary journal. What’s the worst that can happen? You’ve already rejected them yourself, right? What, is somebody else going to reject them? If they do, big deal. But if they don’t, yeah. Same thing with your novel, your biography, your paper for school, give yourself a break. You’re only human. And there is something deeply beautiful about being human and about living in a community where we are all flawed, and we share our flaws, and we understand our flaws, and we understand each other’s flaws, and we love each other all the more for it.

So at the beginning of this podcast, I said that today’s topic was going to be, who is my audience and how do I write for them? And you’re probably like, Sarah, you’re going on and on about perfectionism. That’s not today’s topic. And you are totally right. But you know what? They tie together. Because I’m a perfectionist and I hate it when things don’t come full circle. Yeah. So I want to start talking about audience by telling you a story. I used to work for a company that I will not disclose here, with a coworker whom I will call Jane DOE. And again, you probably know this by now, but I am a perfectionist. But along with that comes the innate need, not only for other people to accept and admire my work, but also for people to accept me. So maybe I’m a narcissist, I don’t know. But there is this part of me that is a people pleaser.

It’s part of the reason I am so over-involved in everything. It’s why I’m on 6,000 committees, because I can’t say no and risk hurting someone’s feelings. I say that as a setup for this story. So I worked for this company with my coworker, Jane DOE. And for absolutely no reason that I could discern, Jane DOE did not like me. I could not get her to like me. I took her out for coffee and lunch. I oohed and aahed over pictures of her children. I complimented her outfits, and told jokes specifically tailored toward her that I thought she would find funny. But Jane DOE did not like me. I guess today’s podcast episode is about hard lessons. Because the hard lesson that I have had to learn is that not everyone will like you, no matter how hard you try, no matter how much you want them to, at the end of the day, whether it’s your fault or not, you will have some enemies.

That was the first lesson that I learned. The second lesson was, it’s okay to have enemies. As much as I love to live my life for others, I can’t live it for everyone in the entire world. And that’s okay. I know that there is a temptation when you are writing a poem or a story or a novel or anything, to look critically over your work, to read it over with a critical eye and say, you know what? Yes, this is pretty good. But then comes the fear and the doubt, then comes that part of you that says, but person X, but Jane DOE, will Jane DOE like this? I mean, I’m writing a horror novel in the horror genre, but the people on the Booker Prize committee, will they like it? Will that one impossible to please professor from my college days, read this and change his mind about me?

And then at that point, it’s so easy to go back and edit and destroy something that was good for someone we cannot possibly please. And to remove truth and meaning and beauty from our work for the sake of someone who, and I am sorry to say this, but it’s true, does not care and will never care about you. And that is okay. So the question that we end up asking, is who am I writing this for? The super obvious answer is, you’re writing this for your readers. Okay. Yes. So who are your readers? I want to answer that in two ways. The first one I’ve talked about a little bit before, and that is, readers of a certain genre will have certain expectations. The romance genre is a really great example here. There are certain things that your readers expect, and that you must adhere to in order for your book to work and to meet your readers expectations.

There needs to be an interesting heroine, a charming/hunky/whatever floats your boat type of hero, a conflict that threatens their relationship, and a happily ever after ending for the couple. It is probably extremely difficult to go to your local bookstore, browse the romance section, and find a romance novel in which one of the two main characters dies tragically. Readers of certain genres have expectations. If you are writing in the horror genre, your book should probably be a little weird or disturbing or troubling or scary, horrifying, if you will. So in my work, I do a lot of strategy around web writing. And I often have to explain to clients that web writing and writing for print are actually very different. People read differently online than they do on paper. They expect a different sort of voice than they do between, say, a printed brochure and the homepage of your website.

There are certain parameters, paragraphs need to be shorter, sentences need to be shorter. It’s okay to use I and we and you. And when I talk to clients about writing for the web, the number one thing I ask them to define before we start any project is, who is your audience? Who are you writing for? Because we need to understand who we’re writing for before we can write for them. And so, discovering who that audience is can be challenging. Not only because we tend to make assumptions, or because we include Jane DOE and spend too much time trying to please someone who will never probably read our work. But you have to realize, that yes, you’re writing for other people, but you’re also writing for yourself. That process, those hours of strategy and outlining and character creation and careful study of poetry, that’s all for you.

Your reader is not going to see all that effort that you put into creating your product. Again, I hate the word product, but I’m using it. That process is for you. I know that sometimes I have the tendency to ask a very destructive question. And that question is, who would ever want to read this? Well, you know what? I have an answer for you. The answer is someone. Really, someone somewhere is going to read what you’ve written and enjoy it. No matter how weird or terrible you may think it is, someone somewhere is going to enjoy what you’ve created. Maybe not everyone, maybe not Jane Doe, and maybe not even the majority of people, but rest assured that there is someone who will find meaning in your work. And so my best advice to give you is, write first for yourself. You are your books first reader.

I’ve said that before, that comes from Stephen King’s book On Writing. And I will probably say it again. And if you are not enjoying your book, if you’re not having fun writing it, if it’s not taking you to unexpected places and surprising you and delighting you, then it will probably fail to do that for your readers. So write for yourself, use it as a journey, use it as that process to distill and refine who you are, to discover things about yourself. And then when you’re done, when you have pushed perfectionism aside and decided that you are finished with your first draft, that’s when you start thinking about your audience. That’s when you edit, is the sentence clear? Is this concept understandable when we ask, who is my audience? There’s something mildly terrifying if you are an introvert like me, about thinking about your book in the hands of a lot of faceless judgmental people, your audience, and it can become paralyzing to think of Jane Doe, and your parents, or your siblings, or close friends, or your pastor at church, or your sweet Aunt Dorothy, reading this book.

You want to take out that steamy romance scene because we can’t let Aunt Dorothy read that. We need to take out some of those swear words because mom won’t be okay with that, her heart will explode. You see where I’m going with this. That’s why I say, write first for yourself and then edit for your audience. Okay? So who is that audience? You’re probably not going to like this answer. But when you think of your audience, I want you to think of one person, not the judgmental masses, but one person who is kind hearted and earnest and wants to see you succeed, who will not judge you or tear you down, but who will only build you up and give you criticism, yes, but constructive criticism that will help you. My husband is a novelist, and he says that it helps him sometimes to think of only writing for one person.

And I’ve seen the screensaver on his computer when he steps away and it comes up, and it says, write only for Sarah. Which I think is really sweet. So, thank you, Tim. For me, it also helps to write for just one person. It keeps your writing from being too self conscious. It keeps you from destroying some of the best parts of your own work because you’re afraid that others won’t like them. When I write, and I’ve never told this to anyone before, so you are the first. When I write, I write for one of the greatest encouragers that I have ever known. I had the great privilege of attending Valparaiso University in Indiana, and studying with professor Walter Wangerin, Jr., who won the National Book Award in the ’70s for The Book of the Dun Cow. And Professor Wangerin had this truly great gift of connecting.

He was a people person. But he was a people person who understood art and the struggle and the journey and the process, and could pinpoint what you were going through with a particular work and pull out and highlight the good. He stopped teaching soon after I graduated. He fell ill with lung cancer, and he got thin and he looked old. But on my desk where I do my creative writing, I have a picture of him as I remember him. And he’s smiling his crinkle eyed smile, and exuding warmth and patience and encouragement, and I can still remember him saying that he believes in me. And so when I write, it’s that essence of that person who helps to dispel the fear and the doubt. I hope that after you’re finished writing for yourself, you have someone like that, that you can edit for. That audience of one, who cares about your work and can’t wait for you to finish it.

So what I’d like you to take away from today’s podcast is, write first for yourself. Write the book that only you can write. Share the story that only you can tell. And then once you’ve finished a draft, and please do finish a draft, then go through it. Not with an intensely critical eye, not with Jane Doe’s eye, but with the eye of that one person in your audience who thinks the best of you, and who sees the best in you, and who wants you to succeed. So for this week’s book of the week, I read a collection of poetry. This is one of my absolute favorite collections. I first discovered it in college when I was working for the project on civic reflection through the Lilly foundation. And this is a collection of poems called Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times. And it’s edited by Neil Astley. And I would encourage you to pick up a copy, because it is an incredible work.

It’s an anthology of poems divided into different sections. So there’s a section called body and soul, dead or alive, bittersweet, growing up, man and beast, in and out of love and so on. And this collection of poems by various poets is singularly life affirming and encouraging. And so if you are ever going through some tough times, there is probably at least one or two poems in this volume that will speak to you. This is actually where I discovered my favorite poet, Mary Oliver. As her poem, “Wild Geese”, graces the very first page of this collection. I want to say how, I don’t know, childishly excited/delighted I am that you are listening to my podcast. I’ve never done anything like this before. I’ve never taken a risk like this on my own accord, but I’m doing it and people are listening to it. And I’m so grateful that you’re tuning in.

There’s something so lovely and affirming about being seen. And so, thank you. I would also like to thank my first two Patreon donors. I’ve mentioned before that I run this podcast on my own time and my own dime, not for profit. And if you would like to consider donating to help me keep this going, you can do so through Patreon, which is a very secure and easy to use platform that I will link in the show notes for this episode, in a link that says help support my podcast. But I would like to specifically call out Sean Locke, official rare dude for his very generous contribution. Thank you, Sean. If you want to be awesome like Sean, you can do that through my website.

You can also contact me with questions or anything that you’d like to see on the show. Just go to sarahwerner.com, and go to the contact page, there’s an easy little form to fill out. You can also email me at hello at sarahwerner dot com. Also, I have an email mailing list, and I am a sporadic person. And so, I will not tell you that you will receive exciting emails from me once per week on Tuesdays at 9:30 AM, because that’s not how I work. However, I will tell you that if you go to my website and sign up for my email mailing list, that you will get surprising and fun and delightful emails whenever I feel like sending them out. Isn’t that delightful? The answer is, yes.

If you’d like to sign up for my email mailing list, which will keep you informed of new podcasts, episode releases, and other such exciting news, go to my website, scroll all the way down to the bottom, and you should see a little popup that says, I like you. Just enter your email address and that will sign you up for my email list. Alternately, you can go to my contact page and click the link there. I feel like there were about 10 million things I needed to tell you today. And I hope I got at least nine million of them covered. Thank you for listening. I hope this podcast has helped you at least a little bit, to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and write every day. I’m Sarah Werner, and remember: done is better than perfect.

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