The Fall 1975 issue of Paris Review featured an interview with novelist John Steinbeck. He won the Pulitzer Prize and was a Nobel laureate, and The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men are still required reading in many English and literature classes. I'm sharing six tips from that interview (culled by the excellent Brain Pickings blog), with a few additional comments by me. This is number three of six:
"Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn't exist. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person--a real person you know, or an imagined person, and write to that one."
It's important NOT to think of specific persons, too, sometimes. Some authors think "My mother's going to read this!" and it creates a block. When the time comes, you can tell your mother not to read it. Anyway, she's probably read Fifty Shades of Grey, so just get on with it!
(Great advice from great writers, along with tips on how to apply it to your own writing is what you get in my book, Your Creative Writing Masterclass, published by Nicholas Brealey and available from your favorite bookseller.)