Write Away

Writing for yourself doesn't mean you don't write to please an audience. Even if that audience is just you.

At least, that's how I've always felt about it. When I write, most of all when I edit, I always carefully go over the scenes I don't really like and try to change it until I do like it. Maybe the audience wouldn't even notice if I put it up as is, but I want to be able to read it again some time later and be happy with what I wrote, instead of cringing away because of a couple of unsatisfactory paragraphs.

Er, anyway. To answer your question, I realise that sometimes when somebody posts an opinion about something they dislike in general (such as summaries that end in a question, or a word they have an aversion to), I will usually initially shrug it off as their opinion, but when I start writing, I'll find myself actively avoiding including those things. Of course, sometimes it's good advice (I can now understand why summaries ending in question marks are usually bad), but sometimes it's just a preference and I'll find myself bowing to it anyway. So yes, I do think about my potential audience a lot when I write. I don't think it really decreases the quality of my writing, as I said above. The way I see it, 'write for yourself' just means that you don't write because somebody else pushed you to, or because you want money, and so on.

You're always your harshest critic anyway. I know I think your ideas are awesome and though I haven't seen any of your work, I definitely haven't seen anything that would make me think your work wouldn't be good. I'm sure a lot of your stuff must be more than palatable!

tl;dr: Yes, and I'm positive that the stuff you write is great so don't worry about that too much!