A Love Letter To Authors

Hello sweethearts,

I know you're tired. I know you spend hours of your time every day---hours you could spend unwinding from your nine-to-five and family needs---marketing and writing your books, instead. I know you probably wonder whether the uphill battle is worth it and whether you'll ever be able to make a living from the months/years you've dedicated to solitude, to intense concentration, to passionate work seemingly gone unnoticed. I know, unless your initials are JKR or SK, that your novels don't pay the rent. Not yet. They are Job #2 (or three or four) of many things you do, and spare time does not exist. And I also know that you do this because you cannot help but do it, that writing books is something stamped into your soul from birth, and that only you can write what you write. We're a masochistic breed, dear authors, but somewhere buried beneath the whips and chains is a joy that only we understand, too. You know the feeling...it's that phenomenal bliss when you hit upon the right chemistry of a world that unravels, somehow magically, from your own head. It's that shift, that perfect, fluid zone that can pipe out half a novel in a week after you've suffered from six months of writer's block. It's that world that becomes absolutely true for you, and those people who live their existence, albeit via your mind and heart, with such truth that you talk about them like they're real, like you believe in them. And you do!

You try to explain it to others. The characters have a mind of their own, you say. They tell you all about themselves. They act of their own accord. They change every day. They change you everyday. And you are in love. And you want to explain it to the masses and say, hey, world, these people are alive! Some simple words have breathed life into them and now they exist! And the world must know that they exist, lest they fade into the ether like loved ones lost. No, they cannot die. You cannot let them die.

It's like Tinkerbell. Clap if you believe...

So, when you're clinging to your last reserve of patience, when your heart sinks at the sight of a bad review or a minuscule royalty, swim above it and float back up into the place that only an author can understand. Relive and remember those miracles and in the midst of the bliss of an ended chapter, or a last page, you'll remember why you finish an entire book in the first place. It was to bring them to life--those beings that teach us about ourselves. It's the same reason we read books.

One day, you'll see that you have created so very many energies that they cannot be ignored.

Write on! Keep your soul alive.

Endless love,
Jennifer