A friend asked today, “How do I know if anyone wants to read what I’m going to write?”
Great question!
Here are my first three thoughts about that:
1) You don’t. Is there something you want to say so badly, you would write it even if no one else cared? Writing requires that kind of dedication, and it’s generally unsung. So consider yourself the most important audience. Writing will change you! It will focus your thoughts, show you connections you never noticed before, and train your mind in new patterns. Even if no one ever read it, it would be worth doing for the personal growth alone.
2) Your competition is a great teacher. If you have none–if you’re the only one writing about your subject–then there’s no market for it, yet. But everything ties in to something everyone cares about–like love or money. So read what everyone else is writing, become an expert on the conversation, and make your own addition to that.
3) Multiply the interest. It seems like the dark ages when authors wrote books and marketers sold them. Now authors are blogging and micro-blogging, exchanging expertise, increasing knowledge and interest in their topics, and attracting followers before the book is ever written. If you’re lucky, these readers will even ask you great questions which you can then answer to improve your project.
See? Thanks for asking!
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Text © Gwyn Nichols 2011. All Rights Reserved.
Photo © Dre Schwartz iStockPhoto® #5330500
Writers' Resort LLC 
I read somewhere that writing was “blah, blah, blah … and gold” (or something like that). I’m trying to excavate more gold … but man it’s hard work 🙂
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If you write it someone will eventually read it. At least that was my attitude when I first started my blog, which ironically got started because I was experiencing writer’s block with a book I’m writing. So, I channelled my energy in a different type of writing … it worked. Love your post.
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Thanks!
And, yea! More proof that blocks tend to be more specific than universal; you can slip through another break in the wall.
You also remind me of something Anne Lamott wrote, “If you are writing the clearest, truest words you can find and doing the best you can to understand and communicate, this will shine on paper like its own little lighthouse. Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.” Of course, it helps that we’re blogging, like painting on a street corner–no wonder people can find us!
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