A Writer. · Wordsmiths’ Guild

A Writer.

Someone recently asked me if I was happy with how impactful my books have been.

I wrote this:

Honestly, I've had almost no readership.

My books are available on Amazon and Lulu, one is already an audiobook on YouTube, and this weekend I'm uploading it to an audiobook platform and finishing the Kindle editions of all of them.

Until now, I've mostly just enjoyed writing them.

In a Little While is probably the most meaningful to me. I got the idea on a Sunday evening, and by the following Sunday morning I'd written the entire book and uploaded it to KDP. I've since gone back through it with a heavy edit, so it's much cleaner than that first version.

As far as impact, though, I have a different mindset.

I'm a huge believer that when the reader is ready, the book appears. That's how it's always worked in my own life. I didn't read Breakfast of Champions until it had been out for a couple of decades, but it changed my life. I read The Stand about twenty-five years after it was published, and that became another pivot point.

So my ideal reader might not even be born yet.

Do you know Horton Hears a Who?

The whole story revolves around an elephant who hears an entire civilization living on a speck of dust. Nobody believes him, and they decide to destroy the speck. Horton convinces the mayor of Whoville to get everyone to make as much noise as possible. Every voice joins in except one little boy who's hiding in a closet because he doesn't think his voice matters. Eventually the mayor convinces him to add one tiny "Yip!" That single voice is enough for everyone else to hear Whoville, believe Horton, and save the entire civilization.

I've always loved that story because I'd be happy being any of those characters.

I'd be happy to be Horton. I'd be happy to be the mayor. I'd be happy to be one of the townsfolk. I'd even be happy to be the little boy whose single "Yip!" tipped the scales.

If one day my books reach millions of readers, make mattresses full of money, and somehow help change the world, that would be wonderful.

But if they sit quietly on shelves for a hundred years until one young woman in Bangor finds a worn copy in a Goodwill, takes it home, reads it, and it changes the course of her life...

I'd be just as happy.

The outcome isn't really my business.

My job is simply to be the kind of person I am.

A writer.

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A Writer.