Who is this for?

Blogging 101’s Day 4 assignment is to consider my intended audience. The easy thing to do is say, “Whoever wants to read what I want to write,” but let’s get a little more specific.

When I write fiction, my ideal audience is me. I start writing something I’d like to read. (When I edit fiction, the readers I have in mind are my college fiction workshop professors, which is both helpful and terrifying. Those folks pulled no punches.)

But for Overlooked Nature, my ideal audience is not me. At least not the real me. It’s some alternate-universe version, a me who studied archeology or illustration instead of ecology. Perhaps a me who stuck with the fiction writing and actually made a living from it, instead of getting sidetracked right when she was starting to sell stories.

I want to present things I know, the same way I like for others to present things they know to me. Factual, but memorable. Detailed enough to be interesting, without being too detailed for the curious adult or teen to grasp. I want this to be a visual version of the podcasts about psychology and physics and history that I listen to in the car. I have never taken a class in any of those subjects, but the narrators break it down so I never have trouble understanding, without sounding like they’re talking to children.

That’s what I want to do. So, my ideal audience is the curious layperson. Maybe a recent arrival to the South who wants to know what’s in the creek in their backyard. Or someone who wonders why they should care that the sandhills are being developed so quickly — it’s just some pine trees on a lot of sand, right? (Spoiler: No, it’s not.) Or someone from far away who wants to see pictures of exotic-to-them creatures. And, of course, anyone who wants to read what I want to write.