Q&A: CNF Writers: Who are we writing for?

Is it for us or for them? Is it okay if it's both?

Contemplating at the Grand Canyon - Author’s photo

“Creating something that’s rewarding and sustainable over the long run requires most of all keeping yourself excited about it, which in turn requires only doing things you yourself are interested in. The key to being interesting is being interested and enthusiastic about those interests. That’s contagious. That’s what makes people read you and come back, which always can only be a byproduct of your own willingness to come back to your own creation.” Maria Popova, Marginalia.

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I’ve been reading Garrison Keillor at his Substack newsletter, Garrison Keillor and Friends, and I’m seeing a pattern there. He’s writing mostly about himself for himself, and I’m finding I like the real him more than I liked his Lake Wobegon persona on A Prairie Home Companion. There was always something condescending about his take on midwestern people, as if he were above us looking at only those parts that might draw a laugh. I think he’s happy where he is now, reporting on real life and real feelings. He’s a joy to read.

Maybe it’s a kind of R&R, away from this cruel, crazy world, but I find myself gravitating to pleasant stories about happy people and their mostly happy feelings. I’m opening up and writing more of them myself—something I stayed away from in all those years of writing before Ed died.

I know comfort writing when I see it and I see it because I go looking for it. There was a time when I was impatient with those writing about their day-to-day lives, as if anyone on the outside would be interested, but then I think of writers like E.B White, Jean Shepherd, Peg Bracken, and Erma Bombeck, who could find enchantment and humor in the mundane, in everyday life, in simple musings any of us might have had.

Dan Rather does it to some extent. So does Connie Schultz. So does Nick Offerman.

I seem to hunger for that kind of writing now, but I wonder if I’m the exception. Or if this is temporary. Am I going there because my own personal pain requires it? Will I abandon it after I’ve done some healing?

So my question today is, how popular do you think that kind of writing is today? Could a writer make a career out of the charming, the mundane, in this climate, in this century? Or will rage and angst always win out?

When things get tough for us as a society, historically the ‘easy’ writers have been there to comfort us. When the time is right, they give us distracting doses of gentle thoughts to get us through the worst of it.

Or maybe they do it to get themselves through the worst of it.

They’ve always been there but how important are they now? I don’t know, but I think I might want to do more of that kind of writing. We all control our own narrative, but how much do we need to know about what our readers want from us? Would I be writing them for me or for my readers?

And would it matter?

Who are any of us writing for when we write CNF? We don’t have a target audience. Our readers come for our words and often don’t know what to expect. How do we satisfy them and still satisfy ourselves?

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For further reading:

The Art of Creative Nonfiction - by Ramona Grigg (substack.com)

Let’s talk about this. As always, comments are open. Your opinions are not just welcome but crucial. See you there!

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