William Brohaugh

Now I was delivering a lesson useful to most writers, one I had failed to heed: Don’t allow your keyboard to do all your communicating for you. Don’t allow the keyboard to do your living for you.

Remember, though, that you measure value against the writing’s intended audience. If the writing has value only to you, but you are the intended audience, you have succeeded. If you wrote that intimate essay about your family difficulties, and it makes you feel better—you have succeeded as a writer. If you wrote that love poem for an audience of one, that memoir for your close family members only, that “in-joke” humor piece for your poker buddies, and they respond, you have succeeded as a writer. Period, exclamation point. Good writing serves its audience. It needn’t be published to be good; it needn’t even be read by anyone else to be good.

Remember, though, that you measure value against the writing’s intended audience. If the writing has value only to you, but you are the intended audience, you have succeeded. If you wrote that intimate essay about your family difficulties, and it makes you feel better—you have succeeded as a writer. If you wrote that love poem for an audience of one, that memoir for your close family members only, that “in-joke” humor piece for your poker buddies, and they respond, you have succeeded as a writer. Period, exclamation point. Good writing serves its audience. It needn’t be published to be good; it needn’t even be read by anyone else to be good.