Don't grovel before the audience

In a Guernica mag interview writer Katie Kitamura discusses resisting the impulse to be liked.

Guernica: You’ve written before about the temptation, when you’re writing, to be liked.

Katie Kitamura: Yeah. It’s terrible. The desire to be liked is acceptable in real life but very problematic in fiction. Pleasantness is the enemy of good fiction. I try to write on the premise that no one is going to read my work. Because there’s this terrible impulse to grovel before the reader, to make them like you, to write with the reader in mind in that way. It’s a terrible, damaging impulse. I feel it in myself. It prevents you doing work that is ugly or upsetting or difficult. The temptation is to not be true to what you want to write and to be considerate or amusing instead. I’m always trying to fight against the impulse to make my readers like me. 

Actors, this is for you too.