We Suspend Our Disbelief

So much retro- and introspection lately. My oldest friend visited this weekend—in my life, an old friend is one I’ve known since high school. It makes me think back. So many experiences and faces, relationships, and struggles. But the truth is, I love to assay, when I have the time and inclination, all that I’ve ever seen. Life is scary when it’s constant and unexamined. Best to avoid too much complacency.

Here’s one thing I was thinking about lately:

Writers are regarded in higher esteem when they sell hardcovers. Most books are mass markets, the small paperbacks you see everywhere. R.A. Salvatore, the biggest name in at least all RPG-based fiction, was the very first author to get a hardcover. I remember because I met him when he was doing a signing for The Legacy. It was a big deal.

But the trend began. And now WotC has been putting out hardcovers for books they assume will sell the best. I’m not financially comfortable enough to be buying these all the time. I simply choose my favorites and wait for the paperbacks to come out roughly one year later. They’re $6 and up, more affordable. Salvatore's Legacy, the first hardcover novel put out by TSR (now WotC), started off in the area of $15-18. But hardcover novels are upwards of $25 now, sometimes more.

Where am I going with this? As a measure of success, if you’re an author, you want to get to the point where you can sell hardcovers. More money, more esteem. Good career move.

Personally, I’d love to just put out mass markets. They’re more accessible to people, more immediate, for monetary reasons alone. I don’t fool myself. Even if I do get a book published someday, writing will never be a good source of income. I don’t really care about that. If I could get books out that sold for $2 each, and each earned me ¢1 each, I’d be happy about it.

I love the idea of being able to share my stories, my convictions, with total strangers. People I’ll never meet. People I’ll never hear from. It’s half-selfish, of course; it’s the gratification of being able to impact or even influence other people, however few. People far away. I’m so in love with that idea. I recently read from a message boards in an "Ask the Author" thread a post someone made on behalf of their sister, who was in the hospital with a serious illness. She wrote: "...for the time I am reading your book, it almost makes me forget about the pain.....and for that I am thankful."

After which the author posted: "THIS is why I write, people. That right there. "

I don’t see what I want to do as pure escapism or fantasy entertainment. I see writing, and fantasy itself, as an interesting medium through which to express my own thoughts. But as in the case of the girl above, sometimes just escapism is enough. I'm okay with that, too.

But I’m realizing more and more lately that life is about trying to find expression. Think about how much time you spend trying to find the right way to get what’s in your head out of your head to other people. Whether it’s a story you’ve been wanting to tell since you were a kid or simply how you feel about a certain person, so much effort in life is spent in that solitary struggle: to translate what you know into something easier to understand for the people around you, be they strangers or good friends.

Ah, well.