To be popular, a “Daily Prompt” post

It was a question of literary standing or current best seller, and there isn’t a question as to what I wanted.

I would love to be a best seller.

And not for the reasons everyone thinks people want to be. Don’t get me wrong, money would be great, the perks that usually come with your books selling hundreds of thousands of copies  not something to turn your nose at.

But I want to make people happy. There is nothing better than getting lost in a book, even if it’s not high brow. Some are great, like Pride and Prejudice, but they’re not for everyone. I can’t really say I’ve finished a lot of the classic, literary books. A thousand Leagues under the sea when I was much, much younger and to the point that I don’t even really remember it. But my shelves, both physical and digital, are filled with modern best sellers, and maybe some that never made it that far but are from the last twenty years. I have a few of my favorite reads from school that my husband had never heard of, a few Christopher Pike favorites that I’ve read and reread so many times that I had to find replacement copies. Namely the Remember Me series. 

Most of the books I own will not be studied in decades to come, but I love them as they are an escape. I don’t need to feel smart while reading, I just need to get lost in someone else’s life for a while. 

It’s the same with my own writing. I am not literary, I know that my writing isn’t even close to high brow, will not spawn deep conversations on the meaning my work will have, or why it’s so important to the world of literature. It’s not. If anyone’s talking about it it’s between friends, a book to read because it was (hopefully) good, and they enjoyed it, and “Oh my god, you should read it.” 

So if there is a witch out there with this kind of power, and she’s happy to grant me one of these two possible wishes, I will gladly take the latter. I don’t need to be remember for centuries, or even decades. I just need to be read.