Here is some clarification from Zinsser himself (ibid.):
“Who am I writing for? It’s a fundamental question, and it has a fundamental answer: You’re writing for yourself. Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience—every reader is a different person.
This may seem to be a paradox. Earlier I warned that the reader is… impatient… . Now I’m saying you must write for yourself and not be gnawed by worry over whether the reader is tagging along. I’m talking about two different issues. One is craft, the other is attitude. The first is a question of mastering a precise skill. The second is a question of how you use the skill to express your personality.
In terms of craft, there’s no excuse for losing readers through sloppy workmanship. … But on the larger issue of whether the reader likes you, or likes what you are saying or how you are saying it, or agrees with it, or feels an affinity for your sense of humor or your vision of life, don’t give him a moment’s worry. You are who you are, he is who he is, and either you’ll get along or you won’t.
N.B: These paragraphs are not contiguous in the original text.
That’s not helpful. Say I’ve got an audience who wouldn’t like me if they knew me as my inner circle does, who definitely wouldn’t be convinced if I wrote as though I were writing for my own. What would Zinsser do? Give up? Write something else? I know that communicating effectively when you don’t personally feel what you’re saying tends to fail, well yes, it’s hard, but that’s precisely what I’ve got to do!
So perhaps the danger you’re thinking of is the opportunity cost of spending time writing something that goes nowhere? That’s sensible if you’re already prone to writing lots of things and need a filter for what not to write.
If you’re like me, though, you don’t write enough, and thoughts that you might productively pursue with the assistance of a keyboard/screen don’t get pursued if you’re always thinking about who’d want to read it before writing, or thinking excessively about making it “sound right” instead of just getting the ideas out in a form that is clear to yourself. So the relevant opportunity cost for someone like that is ideas that you don’t give expression to or that you fail to discover, perhaps to your surprise, that some people will respond to favorably to your writing.
In this sense, I think the principle is pretty useful, at least for me. If after writing it you think people won’t like it, you could publish under a pseudonym, or just move on to writing the next thing.
On Writing Well, by William Zinsser
Every word should do useful work. Avoid cliché. Edit extensively. Don’t worry about people liking it. There is more to write about than you think.
“Don’t worry about people liking it”? This sounds dangerous.
Here is some clarification from Zinsser himself (ibid.):
N.B: These paragraphs are not contiguous in the original text.
That’s not helpful. Say I’ve got an audience who wouldn’t like me if they knew me as my inner circle does, who definitely wouldn’t be convinced if I wrote as though I were writing for my own. What would Zinsser do? Give up? Write something else? I know that communicating effectively when you don’t personally feel what you’re saying tends to fail, well yes, it’s hard, but that’s precisely what I’ve got to do!
So perhaps the danger you’re thinking of is the opportunity cost of spending time writing something that goes nowhere? That’s sensible if you’re already prone to writing lots of things and need a filter for what not to write.
If you’re like me, though, you don’t write enough, and thoughts that you might productively pursue with the assistance of a keyboard/screen don’t get pursued if you’re always thinking about who’d want to read it before writing, or thinking excessively about making it “sound right” instead of just getting the ideas out in a form that is clear to yourself. So the relevant opportunity cost for someone like that is ideas that you don’t give expression to or that you fail to discover, perhaps to your surprise, that some people will respond to favorably to your writing.
In this sense, I think the principle is pretty useful, at least for me. If after writing it you think people won’t like it, you could publish under a pseudonym, or just move on to writing the next thing.