Eugene Manlove Rhodes: Center on the story itself. Think of readers when revising.
Frank C. Robertson: My mind is always centered upon the story I am writing, except where some question of probability or plausibility arises. Right there I stop and work it out from an imaginary reader's viewpoint. Of course, in rewriting I have the reader constantly in mind.
Ruth Sawyer: On the story itself.
Chester L. Saxby: I do not have the reader in mind. I write stories that nobody wants because they don't come out pleasantly, or for some other reason. That's because anything worth writing gets a hold on me as a subject for thought and I want to express it for my own satisfaction.
Barry Scobee: On the story. Never think of the reader, unless now and then in difficult passages I wonder if the reader will grasp the meaning.
R. T. M. Scott: I have my readers always in the back of my mind, but just sufficiently to keep away from things like the war which editors are fed up on. (Perhaps the editors and not the readers are in the back of my mind.) Otherwise I forget the world or all of it which lies beyond the story.
Robert Simpson: I center my mind on the story only. Subconsciously, I suppose, my future audience is being considered while I labor strenuously over revision.
Arthur D. Howden Smith: Try to think only of the story.
Norman Springer: My tendency is, of course, to think only of the story while writing it. This query uncovers a curious thing. Now, when I write a story, I have a tendency to ramble. The trouble usually is that I am too much interested in my character. I like to investigate his feelings and thoughts at much too great length.
Well, I have developed a critic in the mind who works while I write. It is as though some faculty were standing quite aloof from me and the story, watching. When I wander into by-paths it checks me. Sometimes it doesn't, and I get into a mess. It is a faculty that is constantly getting stronger, and, like the fond mother, I have great hopes of it.