One thing you really have to watch as a writer is getting on a soapbox or pulpit about anything. You don't want to alienate readers.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Writers should be read but not seen. Rarely are they a winsome sight.
Writers of fiction should stick to writing, not pop up on panel shows or as a talking head.
All writers want to know that someone is reading their work, taking them seriously. It provides a kind of moral support.
Personally I don't like it when writers become excessively proscriptive about the way that people read their books.
Of course all novelists are egomaniacs and want to draw everyone to their fold just like any other preacher. The snake-oil peddler, the false prophet, all of this is fascinating to me. But I certainly hope that I'm more humane than that.
I wrote for so many years in a bubble, the way everyone does, and there were large swaths of time where you think you're doing this for nothing. An audience is crucial, a back and forth with the invisible readers.
We crime novelists have a great pulpit. We write about justice and about correcting injustice.
I suppose people might consider me a 'loose' reader, as I seem willing to read anything of quality thinking and prose.
In fact, I think for a lot of writers, it's so hard to be read.
I think that if you write what you love to read, that will be what your audience wants to read, too.