I recently saw a clip of Tarantino saying he watches his own films, and when asked why, he said something that is just perfect:
Ah I love them! I love my movies! I’m making them for me - everyone else is invited. Anytime my movies are on TV I’m like “oh hey”, I guess I’m now watching Jackie Brown for a while.
(not the exact quote, but you get the point)
I resonate with it since I think more people should just build for themselves. The audience will figure itself out.
I say that, but I’m not going to ignore criticism from others. I just think many people get rid of authenticity just to please a specific audience, so much so that they start blurring the lines between their actual intentions and what they think the reader would be happy to hear.
An example of writing for an audience would be the Hacker News bunch, who are notoriously frustrating to please. Cause if you leave a tiny detail, they would call you out for it even though it’s completely irrelevant to the subject matter. It’s sometimes absurd, so a fellow blogger decided to redirect HN traffic away from his blog since it was starting to subconsciously affect his writing.
I think the reason Tarantino is so successful is because he loves his craft, and so people are just drawn to his ambition. We should all take a page from his screenplay (very proud of this joke, thank you).