From the Heart

Let’s face it. No one (or almost no one) is going to get rich writing or publishing independent fiction. We lack the marketing machinery, the media contacts, the distribution channels. But we do it anyway, for the same reason writers have written and painters have painted and composers have hummed melodies to themselves for so many centuries. We do it because we need to. We do it because it’s important to us to make something true and resonant and, yes, maybe, beautiful. We do it because that seems like a whole lot of the point of human existence. So we glower and brood and grouse and keep on keeping on, regardless of the depressing economic realities. But every once in a while, we're rewarded with something so cool—not so remunerative, but so cool nonetheless—that the whole endeavor suddenly seems worthwhile all over again. And that, my friends, is a positive review. I know it’s not supposed to matter, but for me, it definitely does. I read something a reader wrote this week about Color War, my little coming-of-age novel, and it completely made my day—my week—maybe my year. Because this reader totally got what I was trying to say. We connected, in the same way I connected with Richard Adams when I read Watership Down, and the way I connected with J.R.R. Tolkien when I read The Lord of the Rings, and the way I connect with Leonard Cohen every time I hear “Take This Waltz.” And my book—the bridge—this portal—was how it happened. It’s cool to think that it’s out there, completed, just waiting for someone else to happen along and climb inside. Or course that doesn’t happen with every book or every reader. Most writers I know appreciate criticism as well as praise. It’s a thrill just to know someone is out there, reading what I’ve written. But don’t ever let a writer tell you he or she doesn’t like to hear that a reader somewhere, for some reason, really loved his book. It matters. And it’s magic.