Found this posted elsewhere on a "long form" writers' board, linked back to (http://an-authors- journey.blogspot .com) - but I think it applies hereabout...

Anybody wanna answer the question? (I'm a for me & others kind of guy... I write for my pleasure [and because I "have to"] as much as for others' enjoyment... but I'm getting ahead here...)

g
===========================

I've been writing so long I don't even remember where it was I started. The first 'book' I ever completed was at the age of eleven or twelve. It was ten pages, in rather large font, and it was an exposition-heavy, deus ex machina-filled science-fiction story. I followed it with a longer sequel, closer to fifty pages in much smaller text. They were my first 'full-length' efforts, and though I don't have copies of them anymore, my grandmother still does.

That was a kick. Don't get me wrong: writing is full of kicks, and finishing a project is one of the biggest kicks of all. I still remember when I finished the second real book I wrote, another six or seven years after these early efforts. I had been working on it for over a year and a half, and when it was finished I was such a mess of emotions I didn't know what to do. I went downstairs, stood in the kitchen for ten minutes, just staring into space ... and I felt like crying. It was over, but I had done it.

But for me, having readers is almost as big a kick, if not a bigger one. After the thrill of knowing someone was reading my words, hanging onto them even, I wanted to do more. When I was fourteen, I wrote stories about a fictional world myself and some of my forum friends lived in. I later rewrote it into a full-length book and published it via a PoD service. That was the first real book I wrote.

My second book was born during my time at college, and in that time I shared it with many of my peers. That was another moment when I realised that I was the kind of author who thrives on knowing there are people reading my work, waiting to see what happens next. For almost a year, that book had sat in slow development, little more than twenty pages actually penned. After I began showing it to people, it took off. I sat down and started ploughing through it. In the next six or seven months, I tore through it, finally completing it at almost two hundred pages long.

All that was helped along by having readers. If I hadn't shown it to people, I believe that novel would have stayed in a kind of development hell until I finally decided to stick it on the backburner, where it would undoubtedly have remained indefinitely.

Lately I've been more private, but my next book is being serialised over Kindle starting next week. And that's exciting for me. Not just because I've finished something, but because now it's going out there, and people will read it. That's the biggest thrill for me, after the fact that a project has seen completion. It's the fact that people will be hanging onto my every word once again.

I'm the kind of writer who writes for other people. I have stories that I want to tell, and I love knowing that people hear them. I write for me, but I also write for you.

Then there are the others who write for themselves. They sit down and churn out hundreds of thousands of words, but they keep it to themselves. Maybe they show it off to a very select few - I don't know. I'm not one of these people. But for these people, sharing is not the kick. For these writers, the journey is the most exciting part.

Which of these writers are you? Do you write for yourself, or do you write with others in mind? Or is it a mix of the two?

http://an-authors- journey.blogspot .com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
<))><