"I can’t write creatively at at all if I think about readers en masse. I do tend to keep one person in mind while I’m working on a story or (personal) essay. Sometimes this person is a reader, sometimes a writer I aspire to be more like, and sometimes both. Often he or she is someone I know, but sometimes the muse is a stranger, quite possibly a dead one (see, e.g., Mark Twain, Muriel Spark, E.B. White). Often the person I’m concentrating on changes as I go. It’s a question of kinship, whatever kind I need to feel to create the thing I’m being pulled toward."
