I think you hit the nail on the head there, Jack. The “product” has to be something that speaks to someone who does not have the context of your imagination. This is why first drafts often suck so many times. We write what we imagine, but not completely. Then we read it framed within the context of our own imaginations and it seems fine to us, not realizing that our imagination is embellishing what we’ve written while we read it. It adds the colours we haven’t painted on the page. When someone new reads what we wrote, they don’t love it the way we do because they can only see what we’ve written, not what we’ve imagined. We haven’t built the world we see in our heads out on paper. They read a sentence and see the hazy outline of what is perhaps a barn while we see the Windsor Castle. The skill to show what we imagine is one that most, if not all, have to learn.

Hmm, I might turn this reply into a longer post :)