For whom do you write?

(I wanted that to say 'who do you write for,' but I don't want you to think I don't know my grammar. Which is a teensy bit ironical, really.)I was invited to speak to the book club at my local library last night--they were reading Mary Modern--and someone wanted to know if my editor or publisher had asked me to remove the overly political bits, or if I ever considered doing so. She pointed out that I was potentially alienating half of my readership. I replied that my editor had said she expected I would be criticized for it, but she left it up to me. And I decided to keep it, I said, because taking it out would have been disingenuous. Mary Modern was written around the time of the 2004 election; it is a product of that era, and of who I was when I was 23 and 24. (Actually, I remember thinking I ought to follow my own character's advice--that life is too short for subtlety.) But more importantly, I write to please myself. I write the story I myself would want to read, and if you like it too, then I'm thrilled; and if you don't like it, well, what can I say--I'm not your circus monkey. (That's not to say the lady at the book club didn't have a good point to make; when readers say the novel's politics 'take the shine off somewhat,' I completely get that.)If you are thinking about your audience as you write, calculating your every word to please, flatter, shock, or elicit any other sort of reaction, then what you are making is not art--it is product.You write for you.