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I think you've hit the nail on the head when you say it's different with young readers, Nicola. It's not that writers for adults don't need to think of their readers but that (a) their readers are not as different from them as our readers are and (b) there are, statistically, so many more adult readers than young readers that it's not necessary to appeal to as many of them with each book.

We need to think about what our readers will understand - from words to themes and ideas - as well as what pleases them (not the same as pleases adults). We also have readers passing through our target age group in a few years, while the Ian Rankins of the world have readers that stay in their target pool for 60 years! They can afford to please themselves more.

Mmm...I can see what you are getting at - I think. But, if you write for children, do you need to write for yourself as a child?

Please accept my apologies in advance because I'll probably get wearisomely esoteric. This is something I've thought about a vast amount - and argued about with my critical conscience (aka the wonderful Marc Nash) - for about two years - since I made "Writing is for Readers" the slogan of Year Zero.

The long and the short of it is that I think both positions are right. The problem AS a reader with gaining something from a text is that as readers we are individuals living in a world made of specifics, or actual relationships and real problems. There ARE NO generalities, or universals or "issues" opr "principles". There's just the noise in YOUR head. At that level, no book will speak to you.

But they do speak. And the books that do - the ones that address that noise, either to soothe it, or clarify it, or amplify it, are very rarely ones that deal in generalities. They take individuals, tiny, exact lenses on life - the kind of lens through which we see our own life.

Yet many writers, when they start thinking of readers, will suddenly switch to universals, issues, generalities - because they are speaking to a group, or an ideal. Whereas what they need to be doing is not trying to connect by finding commonalities, but zeroing in even further on specificities. And (and I don't mean write what you know - there is a VAST difference between confessional literature and autobiography of any kind - cnfession has to do with telling not your story but your truth - and a truth can be as specific as a story, and we can dress it in a million fictional clothes) the one real specific one has is oneself. Therefore, the only way to connect best with one's reader is to write oneself.

'The one real specific reader one has is oneself'. That hits the nail on the head for me. I am both author and audience. I don't think about the reader as I write, but when I go back over what I've written, as a reader I see what's wrong, and I cut stuff and prune stuff out and rewrite and rewrite...

The reason there are so many horrid books for middle grades is that some authors are not paying any attention to what children want to read. There are so many boring, didactic books about quirky misfit children, and I NEVER have a student come and ask for that sort of thing. Is it that many authors were quirky, misfit children and they are writing for themselves as children? That would be a mistake as well. All writers should be required to talk to actual members of their target audience on occasion!

There is also - for more experienced writers - a sense in which you write for your publisher, no? You know what kind of thing they will like and you edit your ideas to fit. If you write for more than one house, then you have a bit more scope.

Elen - damn, I forgot about them!!

Yes, Elen, you're so right! If one of my publishers turns something down, I don't know what to do with the thing as I know I've written it for that editor/list and it will take a bit of changing to fit another.

Having a keen and helpful builder hammering and scraping away at the damaged pointing on the wall just outside my desk at this very moment, you have my total and extreme sympathy, Nicola.

As if you didn't have enough frantic trouble trying to move in! Forget the "think of yourself for a bit. Go "Cossett yourself for a bit!" And oh, that awful depressing smell of damp. Poor you!

Ms Yingling you are so right. 'All writers should be required to talk to actual members of their target audience on occasion!'
This is especially true if that target audience is at either end of the spectrum, very young or teens.

Little children will get totally bored if your book doesn't connect with them, and a teenage audience are always a challenge. They will almost always let you know immediately if you are being pompous, boring or if you book is not working for them.

When I am writing I have things at the back of my mind like what the gatekeepers (publishers etc) might not let through - this might be something like not encouraging and lauding dangerous activities.

Also the interests and problems faced by my potential readers in their lives- so that what I write will enlarge their view of the world or give them a look at possibilities they might not have thought of.
The information about who I am writing for and what works for the reader is always there somewhere in the background.

But all this is hopefully deep in my subconscious mind -
It's a bit like when I am writing for a strict brief for an educational publisher, when I need to follow their guidelines so that the books will be fun to read but also useful for teachers. With these I read the brief, so that I understand the basics, then put it away so that the ideas and the story can come first.

But perhaps it is also like the knowledge that if I pick up a hot dish from the oven I will get burnt so I reach for the oven gloves - I don't need to think about it but I know what not to do!

Penny is right, Nicola, cosset yourself for a bit. What a nightmare -hope it all gets sorted soon.