October Novel Prep Challenge

Decided to go against my carefully constructed personality and do tomorrow's assignment early.

I hate demographics. I hate the entire concept of demographics.

I know, I know - hate is a strong word. But I'm a writer, and I chose it because it fits.

As soon as you start putting people into boxes, you divide them. Democrat vs. Republican, black vs. white, old vs. young, Slytherin vs. Gryffindor... artificial boundaries, all of them - with all due respect to the Sorting Hat.

They can prevent us from finding common ground.

I have more in common with a particular woman half my age than I do with any of my male contemporaries, and yet when you look at demographics, you lump me in with a lot of guys I have nothing in common with except plumbing and decade of birth, and you make the assumption that I have to enjoy different things than my younger friend does - granted, of course, I do, to the extent that no two people are ever going to be exactly alike, not even twins.

I was born between "generations." Am I a Boomer? Am I Gen X? Who knows? Besides marketing gurus, and they certainly don't know me. And besides, what does it matter, when everyone "targets" Millennials? The simple fact that I know these artificial divisions exist disgusts me.

I made a Harry Potter reference joke above, but I'm not the intended audience of those books. Yet I read them, and enjoyed them.

With the advent of the internet, we can freely talk to people from all over the world, of different religions, ethnicities, genders, likes, dislikes, and not even know it unless someone makes a big thing out of it. I've found common ground with Christians, Muslims, atheists, Hindus, Pagans, Jews and people in different countries. I've had bitter disputes with other men born in the 1960s. You just can't reduce human interaction to pigeonholes or honeycomb cells - we're more like pigeon crap, getting into everything willy-nilly, or, if you prefer, the honey dripping from the comb.

I've said this before, but some of the greatest works of fiction were crafted not to appeal to a demographic, but for one or two individual people.

So that's what I do. And if someone else enjoys them in the process, I'm glad. If not, that's okay, too - we're all different.

But mostly, we're all the same.

...the above notwithstanding, I fully support tomorrow's exercise. I agree that you should definitely pick a target audience. Just... please remember what I've said.