The desperation of writing

I know this was ego-driven, and I know this was very … almost narcissistic.

I spent several hours in a book store over the holidays. It’s a tradition my wife and I started as gifts to one another. The kids were at grandma’s and we took our sweet time perusing the shelves.

And boy did we enjoy it.

But honestly, the more shelves I walked the more I had this growing sense of desperation.

There were thousands of books in that little store in a small city next to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma … not a hot spot for most people to live in or visit.

Thousands.

Maybe tens of thousands.

Shelf after shelf.

Thousands upon thousands of writers hoping that I would pick up their book on my yearly shopping spree and buy their book.

And not only buy it, but love it, be changed by it, and share it with everyone I know.

And being a writer myself and being in the process of writing a book, all I could think about was my lonely book on those shelves.

And it’s not that the store was empty. It was pretty busy. Lots of people buying books.

I’ve published a few books, but definitely nothing that was in that store. That wasn’t my desperation though.

I know this was ego-driven, and I know this was very … almost narcissistic.

But I didn’t want my books to be like all the other ones on the shelves, being forgotten.

I wanted to rise above them all. I wanted my books to be seen by everyone. I had a moment—or a few hours worth of moments—wishing to change the world with my writing.

I wanted to be found.

I wanted to have an impact.

I wanted to change hearts, lives.

I wanted the world to be a better place because of something I had written.

But there were so many books.

So many books.

So many writers wanting the same thing.

And it wasn’t just wanting to be found, oh no. It wasn’t just wanting a piece of the action, a small part to play in the world.

I wanted to be more well-read than J.K. Rowling.

I wanted to be read for generations.

That sounds so egotistical now to me!

But here was my rationale:

Why write something that wouldn’t get read more than a couple hundred times at most? Why write something that is going to be drowned and forgotten?

If I’m going to write something, I want it to be good enough to change lives. If I can’t write something that powerful, it’s not worth writing.

Now, let’s stop here and think how irrational and wrong that is.

OK, now that you—and I—know it was irrational, we can still realize that that is also what I wanted.

I mean, I was looking at books by Brandon Sanderson and JK Rowling, etc. and they didn’t even have their own sections.

They’ve written books that are read by millions of people and raved about. In the case of Harry Potter, there are movies, theme parks, toys, sports, probably even holidays, etc etc etc made around her books and I couldn’t even find the books in the store!

Her books are probably the closest thing to the next classic that has been written in our generation and I couldn’t find them.

Brandon Sanderson writes so masterfully he has a way of ending books named after him (Sanderlanche) and he is as close to a household name as I know besides Steven King, a few others, and JK Rowling.

He only had a handful of his books in the store and they were hard to find!

What hope do I have of writing something that is read for generations with wide appeal?

Will anything that gets written these days be a classic?

How did books like Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, Anne of Green Gables, Narnia, Jane Eyre become classics and maintain that for so long!?

Because so many books are written these days, is the idea of classics just dead?

Will Harry Potter even be read for generations?

Again the question about what it means to be a classic came into my mind, but it also took a detour which might be helpful.

I was trying to talk myself through this desperation episode once I realized what was going on and I came to … let’s not call it an epiphany, but maybe it’s a ray of hope that can grow.

Maybe there are person-specific classics.

And maybe that’s what the goal should be.

With so many books being written these days, maybe I won’t be read for generations by everyone, but maybe there’s a small segment of the population or a group of friends or a person who is changed by my writing enough to read and re-read my books and then to convince their kids to read it.

Maybe one of those kids will also tell their kids to read it because it was their favorite book as a child.

Maybe one of those kids will be my kids.

(Hint hint kids … 😁)

If it’s not even clear if Harry Potter or anything that I love from Brandon Sanderson will be read in a few generations, I can at least have hope that maybe there’s a small group of people out there that will say,

“After you’re finished with Great Expectations, I bet you would love this book by C. Louis S.”