When I'm in the first stages of writing--as in, thrashing around, what-the-hell-is-the-gender-of-this-person writing--then I have no imaginary audience at all. If I start wondering what other people think about it, I get all self-conscious and stop writing. It's only when I start to re-write that I let out the imaginary audience, which is mostly just me and all my neuroses. My neuroses are a very hard audience, actually, judging by the amount of unfinished stories on my computer that no one but me has ever seen.

If I try to bring real people into my imaginary audience, even after I have a first draft, I get stalled. I start going, "Oh god, everyone who reads this is going to think I'm suicidal/crazily religious/an attention whore/etc." Mostly, when I write, I pretend that I'm writing in a vacuum, and the only person who will ever see my story is me. I'm a picky enough reader when I'm not actively looking for crack!fic that I trust my own judgment about what's fit to be seen. Mostly. Sometimes I let myself down, though.