Today, my friend Christy Wells wrote to me in a little conversation we had, ” a demanding reader is an opportunity for a writer to rise to the occasion of improvement.” This idea is truly how I hope I always look at my audience, whether it’s visual or written.

She also said, “The most engaged and appreciable reader is too (wonderfully) selfish to care about what I want as a writer. That reader is my target audience.”

Now, like I told her, I don’t know if I share her target audience precisely, but in a broad general sort of way I agree with a lot of those concepts.

I think, the addendum that I might put on that target might be that while they don’t care what I want to accomplish they are receptive to whatever is put in front of them. They are willing to try to perceive what I might be trying to do, whether they care or not is somewhat irrelevant.

It is important to me that I respect the fact that they cared enough to read what I wrote, or view what I created, and they are not so hostile to my intent that they immediately reject it without any consideration. A sort of apathy towards my intent is absolutely fine, but it shouldn’t be an active obstacle either.

I love the point that selfishness is definitely wonderful in its way, but I do want the allowance that, if I’ve written what I’ve written well, regardless the myriad ways an audience might embrace or reject it, it will have the opportunity to have effect I intended. Perhaps it succeeds, perhaps it doesn’t, but I want an audience that approaches it with an honest indifference.

In that way, I like the idea of an audience and a writer that are only aware of each other in the broadest sense. The writer is often not writing ‘for’ them and the reader is not reading ‘for’ the author. They each have their own agenda and each is perfectly legitimate and acceptable.

I guess, in my mind, the great writer allows the audience to read the work as they wish, and the audience accepts that the writer meant something whether it is relevant to them or not.