The intended audience.

Is the intended audience important when we consider creativity?  How does the audience change the process, the product, and the enjoyment of stretching your brain to see connections, view new perspectives, or represent thoughts or ideas.

While I write this blog primarily for myself, I enjoy the occasional comment or email that it provokes.  But, I am not driven to write here because I want or need your feedback.  This is truly a repository for me.  If something resonates with someone else - that makes me happy.  If no one responds, that is also fine.  I love writing.  But, when I write with a strong audience in mind (particularly my scientific writing), the actual critic that will view my work takes away from some of the pleasure in sharing my findings. 

I dabble in other art forms as well.  I sketch and draw (a common tool of natural historians) as these sketches help me keep structures, forms, and identification straight.  I enjoy photography, both for the aesthetic value of capturing natural moments and capturing the children as they grown and change.  Occasionally I pick up the guitar and try to remember some of what I once knew.  I periodically will pick up paint or other crafty things.  I enjoy doing these activities as an outlet.  But, if I participated with a future audience looming over me, my inner critic gets in the way of the process being enjoyable.

I love to cook.  Finding nutritious and delicious ways to feed myself (and my family) is a joy.  Sadly, our palates do not always agree on what constitutes delicious.  With a terribly fussy youngest child and a super-taster for a husband - I have been somewhat limited here as of late.  Thus, here is another creative endeavor where my process changes when I have an audience.

When you create - how does your audience change the process?