There's a useful frame I borrowed from a friend: every piece of work is a letter to someone. The question is who.

The audience can be specific. The best post I ever wrote was a letter to my younger self, who needed to hear that thing in 2015. The post took a year to find. Once I admitted I was writing it for him, the structure fell into place in an afternoon.

The audience can be general — but only if it's specifically general. "Everyone" doesn't read your blog; "the kind of person who would search this exact phrase at midnight" does. Aim there.

The audience can be one person who will never see it. Some of the best work I've made was a letter to someone I'd lost touch with. They'll never read it. The piece is still better for having an addressee.

The audience cannot be you at the moment of writing. That's a journal entry, which is fine, but a different document. The function of the audience is to keep you from saying things you don't actually mean.

A piece without an addressee tends to slip into performing for an imaginary applause. The addressee is what keeps it honest.

This is also why I've stopped trying to write things that "would be interesting to a wide audience." A wide audience has no face. I write to faces.

Related: Notes on writing in public.

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