I used to think that when I was writing, I was writing for myself and not my audience, but then my first book was self-published and a few of the negative reviews got to me. Many people didn’t like my ending. A lot of people thought my character should have chosen the other guy over the guy she picked. There were so many different opinions that when I sat down to write the second novel, I was paralyzed.

The paralysis has lasted over four years now, and I’m still trying to figure out exactly what I’m going to write for the second book. I’ve written draft after draft, scrapped, rewritten and torn them to bits. I’ve been pulling my hair out trying to figure out what to write and how to get my audience to really love my story.

Until recently I didn’t realize why my project couldn’t take off. It was all because I was writing for someone else and not taking into consideration what I wanted. I know, dumb right? Wrong. A lot of people feel this way. They feel they are solely writing for an audience and therefore they have to conform to what their audience expects of them.

I was in a class the other day, Theories of Fiction, and a student said we write for our audience. Our teacher actually stopped talking and for a minute the room was silent before she changed the subject, ignoring his words completely.

I found it rather funny that she ignored him, but I also found it painfully true, because on some level we are writing for an audience. Yet after four years of trying to write a novel to please someone else, I have come to realize, that’s not the real reason behind a writer’s story.

I came to the realization last winter that I’ve been doing everything wrong. I had begun working with a writing partner who told me that I shouldn’t be writing for my audience. I should be writing for myself. It made me think about when I was writing my first novel. I didn’t expect to ever really publish it, or that it was going to be a big thing. I worked on the story for two years, writing, rewriting, taking mentorships to better my characters and story. I was having fun creating the characters. I was enjoying making their backstories that most people wouldn’t ever really know about. I liked knowing what their favorite flavor of toffee was without ever thinking it would be something anyone else in the world would need to know too. Writing was fun when I had no audience and no one to please because I was writing for myself.

So, I sat down at my computer and decided that I needed a break from my story. After four years, I really did need to stop working on the same novel that didn’t want to be written. I sat down, opened a new document and began to write something I found fun and exciting. I didn’t write the story linearly. Instead, I wrote whatever chapter or scene I felt like writing, and last month I completed that novel. My friends said it was the best thing I had ever written. Sure, it went through my head that maybe I was going to get somewhere with this story, but I ended up not really caring because I had found enjoyment in writing again.

When you have a story to tell, tell it. Tell it your way. Tell it the way you feel is right. Don’t compromise what you love because you want to get published. Write for your love of writing. Write for your love of your characters. Write for yourself. It’s the only way you’ll write a story worth reading, and from that you’ll get the right audience, not just a large amount of fans. As Oscar Wilde said, “Everything popular is wrong.” Maybe not everything popular is wrong, but it might not be right for the story you really want to tell.