Advanced Composition' and Occasion-Sensitivity Further, people read for two reasons: entertainment or information. [ A writer who confuses, bores, or threatens the reader, "has lost that reader, usually for good." Earlier, Donald Murray's indispensable A Writer Teaches Writing (1968) focuses firmly on the target-audience. So writers, and now textbooks, embrace this pragmatism. Do the nation's writing classrooms, secondary and even collegiate, follow suit? Quite possibly not, which may suggest that advanced composition may often have a mandate to emphasize sensitivity to occasion as the keystone skill in real-world writing which it in fact is. My own foray into freelance writing in particular?77 articles in five years, but not without initial stumbles?taught me that real-world writing in general is varied, difficult, possible, necessary, satisfying. I now feel obligated to impart some of this perspective to my advanced writing students especially. ]