All the People All the Time

I've decided I'm quitting. No more writing for me, not until my novel sells. And sells big.

Some writers have big goals--being famous, getting millions of dollars, blah, blah, blah. I don't care about the money, or the fame. But I want every single person in the whole wide world to love my book. Not just a sort of "Meh, I guess it was okay." I want them to adore it, buy ten copies for friends, read it every morning before they go to work, sleep with it under their pillows.

After all, any book worth anything is loved by everybody, isn't it? Doesn't everybody love Shakespeare? Stephen King? The Harry Potter series? Jane Austen? The Bible? Okay, perhaps not everybody loves all of this--but they would, if they liked reading? Right?

Then again, isn't the second most published book, after The Bible, Hitler's Mein Kampf? And wasn't Huckleberry Finn banned?

You know where this is going, right? I don't have to spell it out for you, do I?

Know this: I'm not quitting. And if only 1 in 5 people who read my book like it--and even if only 5 read it--that's one person I've touched.

And that's all I need. That's all you need, too.