Arguing with the audience

When I’m teaching, I often see students resistant to the feedback of their fellow students. Or I’ve watched writers complaining on Twitter that readers do not understand their stories.

However, once that story leaves our hands, we’re no longer in control of it. We can fight all we want, but the audience will interpret it however they want.

Without an audience, we are only hobbyists, working away at stories that no one will read—and that’s fine if that’s all you want.

But if we want to make a career out of our writing, we need to accept all possibilities of how the audience will react, whether good or bad.