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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42744
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The real question is what do you want to accomplish by writing. If it is to make money or gain fame or impress the neighborhood, then you would likely write to engage one or more target audiences. If you write, as I do, to shape your thinking, then the target audience is yourself. If you write for the joy of creation through the exercise of the writing craft, then who cares who else reads it, other than to validate that you have mastered the craft.

The joy of current technology is that you can serve any of these goals with a minimum amount of effort. You can blog and use that medium to expose shorter works. You can write a novel or a how-to book and publish it through Amazon or similar mechanisms. There are minimal barriers to how you might publish your work. The gatekeepers still exist and they still matter but you can go around them with ease. You do not have to make much of an argument that your work will attract an audience sufficient to provide a return on the investment needed to convey your work to that audience. Just do it.

Thus, the key question becomes, what you do want to get out of the process. And only you can answer that one.

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