Writing in One Direction
You’ve grown—but your audience still needs what you already know, and writing that works stays aimed at them.
There’s a strange moment that happens when your work starts reaching people.
You wake up one morning and realize you’ve grown. You’ve learned new things, developed new thoughts, followed new threads—and suddenly, you start to wonder:
“Should I write about something else now?”
It’s tempting.
But if you’re not careful, you forget the thing that made the work matter in the first place: the person on the other side of the screen—the one who needed exactly what you started with.
The Hard Part Isn’t Writing. It’s Aiming.
I’ve worked with systems where one wrong step would cost thousands. I’ve climbed behind hardware racks, traced cables through ceiling tile, and watched engineers freeze mid-task because a diagram didn’t make sense.
It became very clear in those moments that writing isn’t about what you know. It’s about what the reader needs.
And that doesn’t change just because you do.
A strong document—just like a strong newsletter—stays locked on its target. No matter how many side quests you’d rather chase that week.
When the Writer Changes but the Reader Doesn’t
It’s natural to grow. You try new tools. You study new trends. You start to care about things you never noticed before.
But the reader who subscribed to your work still needs the thing you already helped them with. They’re not on your new path. Not yet.
You lose people when your writing becomes about you instead of them.
The Audience Is the Anchor
You don’t have to guess what your audience wants if you’ve been there.
I’ve wired up systems, patched into networks with a terminal and a login I had to earn. I’ve been the one asking, “Why doesn’t this manual just tell me what I need to know?”
So when I write, I write for that person. The one doing the work. The one making decisions that matter. The one who doesn’t want clever. Just clear.
When I stick to that—when I write for the person I understand best—the writing works.
That’s the Scary Thing About AI, Isn’t It?
It’s not just that it can generate paragraphs.
It’s that it doesn’t know the person. It doesn’t know how it feels to be halfway through a job with the wrong instructions. It doesn’t remember rewiring a system at 2AM with one eye on the clock.
It doesn’t know the stakes.
And when you don’t know the stakes, you can’t frame the information to matter.
That’s what real experience does: it gives you the sense to write what’s needed, not just what’s available.
Keep Aiming. Keep Writing.
You’ll grow. Your ideas will shift. That’s part of it.
But your job as a writer isn’t to show the world what you’ve learned this week. It’s to keep aiming at the person who still needs what you already understand.
Writing for a single audience is a discipline.
And if you do it well, you won’t need to explain why you’re good.
The writing will say it for you.
Question: Have you identified your audience and their needs and, if so, how did you do that?
PS - If you found this post helpful, would you please consider restacking it and sharing it with your audience?
This spreads the word and keeps me writing content that will help you write better and grow your substack.