Who is it for?

It's a question easily ignored. But it's also one of the most important pieces of writing advice I know. It's definitely the one I have the most trouble with.

Answering the questions "Who is it for?" and "What is it for?" gives your writing a purpose. If you don't know its purpose, it's impossible to know how good your writing is.

A drill is an atrocious sandwich filling. But nobody cares about that. Because nobody in their right mind has the desire to eat a drill. The purpose of a drill is obvious.

Writing, however, can do a lot of things. It can entertain. It can educate. It can be use to bully, hurt, blackmail, or enrage someone. Sometimes, it serves no other purpose than to get a few clicks.

Rating a piece of writing can only be done in reference to what it tries to do. To criticise a BuzzFeed article for its literary quality doesn't make sense. Obviously, it wasn't written by Tolstoy. But that wasn't its purpose. The purpose of the article was to make you click on it. And if you get worked up about it, it probably was successful in what it was trying to do.

This piece of advice is hard because it puts you on the hook. If your writing has a purpose, it means you can fail. This can be scary. It's also the only way forward if you want to write something meaningful.

Once you are able to let go of the outcome and focus on the process, a purpose makes writing easier. If you know where you want to go, you can start to work towards it.