Q&A with Farah Ghuznavi: The Writer's Wilderness Survival Kit

QTN: Should a writer write to please the reader or himself/herself?

ANS: The answer to this comes down, partly, to the question of why we write. Most writers I know write because they have to. They are compelled to write in order to communicate with others, to make sense of the world around them and to silence some of the voices that keep them awake at night. In this form, writing can be considered a kind of therapy. And just like therapy, it doesn't always achieve the desired results. But it's the best tool at hand for the person concerned.
It's probably true to say that most writers want to see their work published. That is true even in the cases where writing is a compulsion, and a form of therapy. After all, by reaching out to readers, the writer can validate the value of his or her work – and, in extreme cases, justify her own existence.
But the key question here, in assessing a writer's motives is whether or not she would continue writing even if she were never to be published (however sad that might make her). In such cases, the answer to this question becomes clear: the writer is writing because she is, as Mario Vargas Llosa puts it, exorcising her demons. And that is something she needs to do in order to retain her sanity, regardless of whether there is going to be a reader at the end of the process.
Of course, there are writers who go into the field because they want to be famous, or because they want money or attention. I have often wondered if these are not some of the worst possible reasons to become a writer. Not for reasons of shallowness, but simply because it's so damn difficult to earn a living by writing, let alone achieve fame and fortune! But getting back to the point, it seems clear that for those writers, writing with an imaginary audience in mind would be perfectly reasonable, since it is that imaginary audience that will bring them – in theory, at least – the fame and fortune that they crave.
I'm not sure though, that focusing so much on a potential audience is in any way helpful in enabling a writer to produce her best work. Speaking for myself, I think that trying to write to an audience would make me very self conscious. And by trying to figure out what that audience might want, I would entirely lose the thread of what I was trying to write. So here, my feeling is that if a writer wants to produce the best work that she is capable of, she would do well to focus on producing work that she is herself satisfied with. As Allen Ginsberg memorably said, "To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard."
I tend to believe that if I can produce a story that I'm reasonably happy with, then the likelihood of anybody else finding it interesting, once I have completed my final draft and I'm ready to show it, is probably greater. So I would stick to the advice from the inimitable Kurt Vonnegut who said, "Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia." I think Mr Vonnegut's words display great wisdom. And I would therefore humbly suggest that the one-person audience that you aim to please is, in fact, yourself.