[DoreenMichele]

It helps enormously to know who you are trying to reach. This doesn't necessarily have to be a single person, but, yes, know your audience is terrific advice.

I think we write or create for some faceless other in part because it's easy to criticize and criticism is rampant and people are happy to dog you, your writing or your creation for any old reason. People start trying to figure out how to defend against that and it's not unreasonable to want to defend against that, but it can end up putting the cart before the horse.

If you are writing or creating from a defensive position first and foremost that will impact the creation. It will tend to be all defensible facade and little real substance behind that.

Get to know your audience, try to make sure your audience is some specific individual or some real group of people to whom you can genuinely relate and then consider tweaking it defensively after the fact.