TRANSplants digital release, writing for an audience
TRANSplants Digital Edition
The pdf version of Issue 1 is now available on itch and gumroad. It is priced as “pay what you want”, as I don’t want price to be a barrier. Download and distribute!
Who is my audience?
Last week I sold about thirty copies of the TRANSplants zine at Charlie’s Queer Book Fair in Fremont. Only one of those was to a trans woman. I’ve read plenty of writing advice that emphasizes the importance of knowing your audience, of writing for a certain audience, and I found it interesting that my audience, at least at this in person queer event, for this zine, was not primarily trans women.
When I write, I don’t think about audience. I don’t want audience expectations, even a trans audience, to influence me. It is impossible to precisely predict a hypothetical reader’s specific reaction, and so I instead gauge if something is working by how it emotionally impacts me. I’m writing for myself.
Obviously, it makes sense that other trans women might relate. If I’ve been honest in my writing, there is a good chance some of them will see something reflected. However, I do not relate to many trans women, nor they to me, I’m sure. My experiences and relationship to gender, to sexuality, to navigating the world, to coming out, to self perception, are ultimately rather specific and limited.
But this is thinking about audience through the lens of sociopolitical identity groups. The appeal of a story is not based in identity groups, per se, but in shared emotion. Maybe this is obvious to anyone who went to school for writing, but, if I think about audience at all, it is anyone who I can emotionally connect to. I think the more skilled at writing one is, the greater the distance that can be crossed by this emotional bridge.