I believe that basically you write for two people; yourself to try to make it absolutely perfect; or if not that then wonderful. Then you write for who you love whether she can read or write or not and whether she is alive or dead.
— Ernest Hemingway to Arthur Mizener, 1950 Selected Letters, p. 694.
I got it from Hemingway on Writing which is a short and pleasant read I’m going through right now. It turns out Hemingway was 64 years ahead of me in his advice about who to write for.
Couldn’t agree more: http://john.do/why/
But, I do like the thought of writing for loved ones too… the most immediate person(s) are my daughters.
Timothy Egan’s piece in the NY Times today on where Hemingway was happiest is pretty cool: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/03/opinion/haunted-by-hemingway.html?src=xps