Lindsey Komson

Featured image by lil artsy

I always thought I was supposed to write for my intended audience. If I’m writing a paper for class, it’s for my professor. If I’m writing a birthday card, it’s for the birthday girl. If I’m writing a blog, it’s for…the reader, or so I thought.

After reading Chapter 5 of “On Writing Well” by William Zinsser, I realized that I should be writing for myself instead.

You might be thinking “you’re writing the blog…why are you writing for yourself to just read it again?” I went through the same exact thought process. But Zinsser’s explanation is not only inspiring but empowering as well.

Sure, it’s important not to lose your audience to distraction. Especially nowadays, when apps like TikTok are directly contributing to decreasing attention spans, it’s important for any author to keep an audience hooked on their content. But if you’re trying too hard to achieve that, you most likely won’t.

“You are writing primarily to please yourself, and if you go about it with enjoyment you will also entertain the readers who are worth writing for,” Zinsser writes.

I think that quote is so profound because it’s true. For example, if you’re trying so hard to write a research paper and you’re putting in all these fancy words that nobody understands, the paper isn’t going to be engaging. You’ll probably lose your audience well before the conclusion.

If you write in a manner that keeps even you, the writer, coming back to write more, you’re doing a good job. If you think your content is interesting and writing as such, your audience will most likely be engaged as well.

I know this sounds like a pretty easy concept to grasp, but you’d be surprised how many people stop reading early on. According to the Nielsen Norman Group, “the average difference in how users treat info above vs. below the fold is 84%.”

It’s contradictory, for sure. But by writing for yourself, the audience will feel more compelled to read further along in your piece.

And if they don’t, Zinsser writes, “you don’t want them anyway.”

References

Schade, A. (2015, February 1). The Fold Manifesto: Why the page fold still matters. Nielsen Norman Group. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/page-fold-manifesto/

Zinsser, W. (n.d.). The Audience. In On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction (pp. 24–31). HarperCollins.