Who do we write for?

I just saw an interesting article on facebook. I got the link on a friend's profile.

This person was commenting on our ability to write like Khushbant Singh and Shobha De. If I understood it correctly, his argument was that we write well what we know, and as Shobha De was in Stardust and Khushbant Singh was in Hindustan Times, they can sprinkle real life anecdotes to make their writing richer. So, if we are to write, we should use our own social background and write what we know.

I think it's ok to write what we know. We are in comfortable grounds, we have a position on the topic, we can customize our knowledge to weave a compelling storyline. But I think for ours sake, we should also write about things we didn't know before, but unearthed during a research. Life of Pi couldn't be written if Yann Martel stayed in Canada and wrote about his experiences.

I can't say that I write for myself. It'd be a very boring conversation. I try to find this intelligent human being, and idealized version of me, who is looking for something amusing to read, gets my references and also excited about the things I'm interested.

I think my writing should apply for permanent residency in hermitville.