Yeah, Piers Anthony may have been a small influence.
Funny story. My 11th grade English class was assigned to write a story and I used the word "xanthous" in it. My English teacher flipped out. "Taylor," he said, (he liked calling people by their last names) "keep your audience in mind." I laugh about it now, but at the time I thought he was being a jerk. It actually taught me something. When I got serious about being a writer, I'd remember that. I think about it all the time now. It keeps me on track. Whenever I write something, I always ask myself, who is my audience? And I write for that audience.
Ironic twist: My 11th grade English teacher's name was Ward English. And he ran his class like a ward--a prison ward. Or a lunatic ward. Either way, he taught people stuff. At that time, I didn't like him. A lot of other students did. He was a much better teacher than I gave him credit for, even if he didn't like the word "xanth."
Well, your audience just got a little larger. For some reason, Anthony has come up a couple times over the last couple of weeks. @improv likes him and has a punday Monday contest, that fit very well with Anthony's genre.
I sometimes wish I would have paid better attention in English, it was not my subject. I am horrid at fictional writing, but I rather excel at technical writing, but I do struggle with executive summaries. Probably for the reason you suggested, writing for my audience, I typically expect executives to be savvier than they are at times. It's sad really, I'm not a writer but I put out 30 to 60 thousand words a week, according to my Grammarly account.
Technical writing ain't easy, so if you're doing it, you must have something going for you. I guess that makes you a writer. We come with different stripes.