If something in your writing gives support to people in their lives, that's more than just entertainment-which is what we writers all struggle to do, to touch people.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
You have to keep your audience in your mind; if you're writing stuff that you know nobody's going to care about then you should rethink what you're doing!
In today's time, writing stuff that actually happened is touch-and-go, because you don't want to be too personal. If you are, then it probably won't relate to a mass audience. A lot of times you have to make it sound like it's about everybody else, but you really went through it.
My purpose as a writer is to communicate in such a way as to challenge the thinking of readers and touch their hearts.
Writing is, by its nature, interior work. So being forced to be around people is a great gift for a novelist. You get to be reminded, daily, of how people think, how they speak, how they live; the things they worry about, the things they hope for, the things they fear.
Writing is like a contact sport, like football. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it.
One of the nice things about writing is you can take essentially painful things in your life and turn them into something that might be useful, or at least entertaining, to somebody else.
I can't imagine a more fulfilling thing for a writer than that you've made a strong impact on the lives of other people. Just because I've heard it before does not mean I don't want to hear it one more time.
It's so much easier to write for a person in your life than to write for some imagined readership, so you write something that's more intimate and true.
Writers are in the entertainment business, and it gives me lots of pleasure to entertain my readers.
If we lose sight of the fact that writing is entertainment, then writing is doomed.