A Chat on Writing for Yourself

Writing “selfishly” is presented as the only sustainable way to make a book that the author can stand behind: chasing a hypothetical reader’s approval tends to warp plot decisions, hollow out structure, and make feedback feel like a threat to the story’s identity. The core claim is blunt—there isn’t one reader to satisfy, and trying to optimize for the widest possible approval guarantees unhappiness, because every book will inevitably earn both love and one-star reviews.

The discussion begins with a personal admission that the author used to be a people-pleaser who struggled to hold firm opinions. That tendency bled into writing as a constant background calculation: what will other people find acceptable, non-controversial, and “palatable”? Over time, that mindset produced two related problems. First, it led to manipulative, reaction-driven drafting—plot points were chosen to trigger specific emotional responses rather than to serve the story the author actually wanted to tell. Second, it evolved into self-criticism based on imagined reviews, where the work was judged through a fictional audience instead of lived creative intent.

From there, the argument widens into a practical critique of “reader-first” advice. The author distinguishes genre fiction’s real craft constraints from the extreme version of reader-first thinking that treats the author’s desires as irrelevant. Even within a target audience, tastes vary; the “perfectly palatable for everyone” book would be so drained of life that it would lose zest. The pursuit of universal appeal becomes a paradox: the author can’t fully like their own work because it’s always contingent on whether every reader segment approves.

Instead, the preferred approach is to write for oneself while still using feedback intelligently. The key is not ignoring criticism, but filtering it through a clearer internal vision: does the note help communicate what the author intended, or does it pull the draft away from that goal? Feedback becomes a tool for revision—especially when it reveals communication failures in language, plot beats, or developmental structure—rather than a referendum on the author’s worth.

A turning point is described around finding a personal writing style and later switching toward literary fiction. Once the author stopped treating reader enjoyment as the primary metric, the focus narrowed to communication: if the story isn’t landing what it’s meant to communicate, revise; if it is, then reader dislike is simply taste, not a writing failure. The author argues that it’s unreasonable to demand that stories be for everyone, and that negative reviews are inevitable anyway.

The closing message ties the philosophy to emotional resilience. Writing for oneself reduces the “end of the world” feeling when someone dislikes the work, because the author’s satisfaction and intent remain intact. The author also draws a boundary around direct, rude comment behavior—criticism is fine, but unsolicited hostility isn’t—then invites viewers to share whether they write for themselves or for readers, emphasizing that both paths can be valid if they lead to a writer’s happiness.