Kurt Vonnegut

"Write to please just one person.  If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia."

— Kurt Vonnegut
American Novelist
1922 - 2007

Whom do you create for?  Yourself?  Your relatives?  The masses?  Write for yourself.  Write to please yourself?  Paint for yourself?  If you paint what others want, you will lose yourself in the dust.  Scribble for yourself.  You are the only one you have to please.  Not your parents.  Not your spouse.  Not your editor?  Not the general public.  Just yourself. 

Here are Vonnegut's eight tips on how to write a good short story.