This might be the most rhetorical question out there.

Pick up your pencil, or pull out your laptop and start writing. Don't even think about what the words you are writing down are saying, just write them. Do it for as long as you want, or as long as you can.

Don't think, just write.

Obviously, tailoring your writing to your audience is important. Nobody would write a paper about medicine using extremely advanced medical terms and ideas for anyone else but medical professionals.

But, the issue of audience is only half of it.

I recently wrote a piece that I thought would be the most amazing piece I have ever written. I thought it would get a ton more views and shares than the rest of the pieces I have written.

That's not what happened.

The piece was about Gabrielle Giffords, and I had spent much more time than usual perfecting my piece. And while it didn't do amazingly well, and didn't produce the outcome I had wanted, it didn't do badly.

It did do better than a few of my other pieces, but I still wasn't happy.

I wasn't about to let my piece fail without knowing what I had done wrong. So I asked one of my teachers for her opinion.

I think my exact words after explaining my dilemma were something like "Would you be able to tell me what's wrong with it?"

When she emailed me back, I was able to use what she told me to realize why my piece didn't do as well as I had hoped.

One of the things she asked was "Are you writing to please, or are you writing to express your authentic views? Are you writing for yourself, or for someone else?"

I still can't get those words out of my head.

I think that writing for ourselves is scary.

What if nobody agrees with us?

What if nobody cares about what we care about?

What if the piece "fails"?

These are extremely honest and valuable thoughts, but we must get rid of them.

Obviously, if we wrote solely for ourselves there would be no motivation to publish our writing. If everyone just wrote for themselves, we would have nothing but our own work to read.

And even if we look at it from another angle, and you did write for yourself but you also published your work, you can't expect something you write based on your beliefs, your passions and your interests, to hit a cord and interest everyone else as well.

But, this problem is two sided.

If we only wrote for others, our writing would be dull.

Imagine having to write a piece about the law when you honestly could not care less and have no strong feelings about the law. Your piece could be decent, but it wouldn't be as meaningful as a piece you wrote about something you are passionate about.

So really, who are we writing for?

Who should we write for?

I believe that the best writers, write for everyone else, but from themselves. They write the words that they hold close in a way that they know can resound with everyone else.

They combine their passions, with the passions of others, in a beautiful, surreal blend of thought, that can encompass the feelings of both them and their readers.

So back to my piece.

Did it fail?

Kind of.

And it breaks my heart to say it, but that's the magic of writing. I can learn from this failure, and make it ten times better next time.

Because next time, I know who I am writing for.