For Whom Do We Write?

For whom do we write? I really don't have an answer for anyone except myself...
I have always written...diaries, journals..notes...did that make me a writer...surely not in a commercial sense...but one thing I discovered early on is that when I wrote...those things that I allowed people to see...someone was always hanging over my shoulder asking to read it...I can remember when I was about twelve and one of my cousins was seventeen, she asked me to write a scathing, sarcastic missive to her boyfriend...yes at twelve, I knew what scathing, sarcastic and missive meant....I did as asked, but told her I needed five dollars...
The same is pretty much what happened when I wrote books...I had an idea and I sat down and wrote until I had a story...didnt think much about anything other than writing....when it was said and done I placed it up for sale...people bought it...asked for more....
However....this brings me to my question....after readers read it, I knew for whom I was writing...however when reviewers, pontificators and experts read it, for a minute I thought, oh my goodness, I am a hack, can't write at all, though to be fair they never said it like that, never rated my work as less than average, but being a perfectionist, average burned like lye in the eye....but all the times readers were still buying...I was still writing...words were pouring from me like volcanic ash...books, books and more books....so what I had to learn to do, the same way I'd had to do on so many ocassions, about so many other things, was listen to my heart and know that this writing thing is bigger than me...and that all those people who emailed me, text-messaged me or sent checks in the mail this week for my latest book just might be onto something....Writers write for their readers...period.

Love and Blessings...
angelia