Writers and Audiences, Including Mysterious Ones

How much attention do you pay to your audience when you write? Linda Flower, a professor of rhetoric at Carnegie Mellon University once wrote that it is the writer’s job to “create a momentary common ground between the reader and the writer….Even if the reader eventually disagrees, you want him or her to be able for the moment to see things as you see them.” As Fowler put it, you should try to bridge gaps in knowledge and attitudes while paying attention to readers’ needs.

When writing these blog posts I often wonder what goes on in readers’ minds when they see them. The Google stats engine indicates readers in various parts of the world, including North America and Europe, Ukraine and Russia, the Far East and Africa, even places like Vietnam and Turkmenistan. Do all these readers find these blog postings interesting, one wonders? There is always the question of how to connect with readers with specific interests without boring too many others. Whether the readers really need to know all this is a good question to ask oneself before publishing anything. Upon reflection, some of my posts appear duller and possibly less thought-provoking than others – yet for some mysterious reason Google reports that people are reading them all over the world. The world of online audiences is a world of mystery compared with that of more tangible, defined audiences such as those of face-to-face classrooms.

One wishes there were more interaction with these mysterious, far-flung audiences - more feedback so that one could improve or better adapt to readers’ needs. For some writers, it is a challenging, puzzling world out there!