Back
to answering another from Karen
Jones’s blog post list:
Are you excited
about the idea of people reading your work…?
I
have always had “people” reading my writing, whether they were my teachers or
family members or friends. I know what Karen means, though. She means people I
never met and likely never will-- except as readers.
My
first published essay was in eighth grade. It was, as we used to say, a “heady
experience.” Many years later, I began blogging. The few strangers who
responded to my early posts quickly became on-line acquaintances.
But
the first review I got to my published novel, The
Voice of Thunder, brought people who were strangers to this day.
This, like my eighth-grade essay, was “heady”. I imagine that multi-published
writers who have wide readership have a more nonchalant feelings for the
experience of complete strangers reading what they wrote. We humans adjust to most
things that are not common and then become a new normal for us.
Few
in the human family, which numbers in the many billions, become so-called
famous. But for the famous (“celebrities,” how I dislike the word) it is just
what is. Fame itself feels undesirable an existence to me. For the famous who
don’t crash and burn, it is just the way it is.
So,
the answer to the question is two-pronged: I find a reaction to my writing from
a total stranger to quicken my heartbeats, but only for a bit, and then I
adjust and it is how it is, part of the package of writing for publication.
Excitement
is an ephemeral thing. It happens, and then it’s gone.
