Stephen... I am going to be straight forward... first by asking this one question..
For whom do you make your photographs
I'll be naive and say that I would hope that all amateurs make their photographs for themselves alone. If you're not being paid to produce images, there's no-one to dictate to you and you have a completely free hand. Some painters have enjoyed this degree of freedom, and some haven't - at least, for some of their works.
It raises an interesting question - which I'll sidestep after this paragraph - as to whether some painters and photographers receive commissions based on their perceived style or whether they can simply be relied on to produce something at the end of it all.
I fully realise that many amateurs throw away this freedom and accept slavery instead - to produce photographs that will please camera club judges, win competitions, or just please the rank and file of other (in some cases, mediocre) photographers (question to self - did I spell that last word correctly? Should the "g" have been a "c" and the "h" omitted?) who can only appreciate an image if it conforms to the rules that they judge by. Some rules being compositional, others related to the necessary light that a photograph should record if a landscape.
In my case, I try to use my eyes, and find something that interests me. It may be an object, or a grand vista. But something that must first and foremost catch my eye. After that, it's the questioning. Why did this catch my eye? What's the essential feature of it? What do I want to emphasise or show to others? And what's the best way of achieving this in terms of arrangement within the frame of my viewfinder? And finally, how do I want the tones to map to the print?
Once I've done all that, and made the print, then that's it. If others like it, fine. If not, then I don't mind. I can happily accept that one man's meat is another man's poisson (as the French say). On the other (large) hand, if someone thinks that I've failed to achieve what I set out to, then I'm happy to hear why, so that I can try to keep it mind next time, and learn from it.
The pleasurable parts for me are the initial looking and considering of the scene, and the final contemplation of the print. Everything in between is a necessary evil to get from the image in my mind's eye to the image before my two eyes.