Hemingway said once:
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.
I agree with this even if I don’t know who I love at the time or if I feel that no one is currently in love with me. If I am writing there must be someone out there who either loves me for what I write or loves the simple fact that I write.
If I’m not writing for someone else – someone who loves me – then I am writing for myself. I am usually trying to perfect some distant memory or mash together what’s left over of my past to make sense of it. When I look back at my life most things that seemed complicated at the time are now decidedly straightforward – the slow fade of life. There is always more than I remember. The “more” is what I satisfy with my writing. Whether it is exact, perfect, non-fiction, or the exact opposite doesn’t matter. What matters is what I want to remember and how I choose to share it.
So, yeah. I can agree with Hemingway. I write to perfect my life. I write for the woman I love. I may even be writing or you.