I often ask the journalists I work with who they write for. A more productive way of framing that question is to ask who they envision as the audience for their essay or magazine story or book. Who do they most want to reach, and why? Is it their sources? The publication they are writing for? The editors?

Or is it, if they’re honest, for themselves?

Acclaimed novelist Margaret Atwood offered her own answer in a March 2023 interview on Here & Now, with the Boston-based NPR affiliate WBUR. A recent rebroadcast of the interview was pegged to the paperback release of Atwood’s short story collection, “Old Babes in the Wood.”

Midway through the interview, show host Scott Tong mentions the death of Atwood’s long-time partner, fellow novelist Graeme Gibson, in 2o19. He asks if some of the themes in “Old Babes” were, in part, a way of dealing with her grief. The question is apt: The book is dedicated to Gibson, and themes of love, aging, loss and death are stitched throughout the stories.

Atwood’s response is succinct and, perhaps to some, surprising:

“Writing isn’t really for the writer. It’s for the reader.”

She goes on to say that any writing she might do as part of a personal catharsis would go into a journal and never be published; it would be for her and her alone. But when she’s writing for publication, the focus and purpose shifts outward. She describes a delightful old convention among writers who, when a work is finished, say:

“Go, little book, out into the world.”

That attitude strikes me as both practical and generous. Journaling is fine. It’s how some people sort through their thoughts and their place in the world. It’s how some of the best published writers I know explore their nascent ideas. Longform magazine writers and project reporters sometimes use it as a form of keeping and organizing notes.

But when it comes to work you actually want to publish, all that internal focus needs to shift outward to serve an audience and purpose beyond yourself. Or, as Atwood put it:

“Once you’ve finished something, it’s not yours anymore. It belongs to whoever receives it.”