After yesterday’s post recommending one of Alan Moore’s short story collections, let’s keep on the theme with this quote from one of my most-admired writers.

“It’s not the job of the artist to give the audience what the audience wants. If the audience new what they needed, then they wouldn’t be the audience. They would be the artists. It is the job of the artists to give the audience what they need.” – Alan Moore

I imagine this quote would cause quite a stir in most writing circles, particularly those social media groups focused on helping writers connect with audiences and promote their work. Among that set, the only job of the writer is to give the audience exactly what it wants. Else, the story goes, the audience will find it elsewhere.

And this is true, if you believe the most important work of writing is sales. If you have sold a few thousand copies of your fantasy-romance novel and developed a following, then the next sensible step is to write another fantasy-romance that hits similar notes to the first and then make its existence known to the same audience that enjoyed the first one. Audiences love experiencing what they’ve already sat through. Hollywood certainly knows this, as do most genre authors.

The downside to this approach is that your audience’s expectations rapidly evolve into audience demands. Now that you’ve written two – or three or eight – stories in a similar vein, you risk alienating your readership if you venture into a new genre or write a story with a markedly different tone. Spend time on any social media platform and you’ll cringe at the sense of ownership and entitlement many readers have on their favorite authors. A woman scorned has nothing on a reader who’s stumbled upon content not molded to their exact tastes. Follow any group of writers dedicated to the hustle and you’ll find many employing multiple pen names, under which they write in different genres and engage with different readerships. Author as split personality.

On the other hand, if you believe that the important work of writing is art, then you have the freedom to experiment and explore. You have the opportunity to communicate, persuade, convince, and philosophize. Ideally not heavy-handedly, but yes, I said philosophize. If you wish to create art, you are likely bored by the very concept of audience wants. It wouldn’t occur to you to write something made to order.

Regular readers will know on which side of this question I fall. To paraphrase Lucille Bluth, I don’t know what the audience wants and I don’t care to find out.  However, I will take Moore’s concept a step further: The job of the writer is to give the audience what you want, and to write what you need to write, whatever that means to you and however you wish to go about it.

We need to escape the mundane world and explore distant planets or magical times. We feel called to share what we’ve learned about grief and rage and love and forgiveness. We need to explore the ugliness we see in ourselves and our confusion and conflicted desires. We want to talk to others who are experiencing what we’ve already lived through, and let them know they are not alone in their feelings. We may want to argue our political ideas and assert the dignity and value of people like us.

As in Voice of the Fire, maybe you want to play with language and challenge yourself to convey your ideas within the constraints of your rules. Did Alan Moore’s audience want a short story narrated by a Stone Age halfwit with no written language and a 1200-word vocabulary? Doubtful. But also, did they need one? Also doubtful. But Moore wanted and needed to write it, and he likely found a few thousand or more readers challenged and fascinated by the outcome.

You are your most important audience. Write what you want. Say what you need to say. You decide. Let the audience come to you. You are not to be owned.