Love & Service

Love & Service. These words look quite beautiful together, almost poetic, but boy are they weighty.  I have by no means become a master of what these words imply, but I must say this—I look at my craft of writing as an act of love and an act of service. I hope that doesn’t sound too grandiose, because honestly, it grounds me to think about the people on the other side of my writing.

‘Who are your audience?’ Is a question that has often been posed to me when I’ve met with publishing industry reps. It’s imperative to know your audience, absolutely, but I try to humanise them and imagine the “who” in the audience, —their individual faces, their personal stories, their situations. And I try to imagine how what I have written could serve them.  

I may never encounter my readers in person, but they have to be resident in my mind if I’m to connect on any level. And the more I think about the people on the other side, the more it motivates me to get better at my craft. To me this is where my labour of love manifests as an act of service—in a sense, I want to be better for you.