We all spend so much time thinking about what is not done, “You didn’t take out the trash,” “you forgot to buy milk…” etc. that we so often fail to notice the things that are done.
Taking things for granted in life is something we have all been guilty of. That’s why so often praise or gratitude is surprising, quite often if people show me gratitude for something I think it’s the start of a joke :p
Don’t for a second think that I’m going to start singing about appreciating the warmth of the sun on your face and the sweet, delicate melody of the birds chirpring in the trees. By all means appreciate those things, you should. But today I want to think about appreciating the other humans around us.
Now I know it’s easy to get mad at the kids, and at your husband when he didn’t “hear” you tell him about the neighbour’s dinner party. You should get mad, I’m sure they deserve your wrath 🙂 But we are nothing alone. Our family and our friends are what propel us forward. Our ambition determines how high we aim. But at the end of the day everyone needs help to achieve lofty goals.
So thank you. That’s really the aim and simplicity of this blog. Every single person who reads this is doing me a kindness. Every person who reads my books, love or loathe, review or not, you’re all doing something nice for me.
I have to show my gratitude to you all. If I could thank every person who bought my book, or read my comments on social media, then I would. But I think I would come off as a bit creepy if I started following all you guys around.
So I want to take this chance, on this platform, to thank you all for having faith enough to take a risk and read my work. All of you are valuable to me, and if I could show you my gratitude personally I would… in a completely non kinky way, promise, lol.
So often we hear about authors, of all varieties, and we hear of publishers, and of distributors, so often the reader is overlooked. There is no industry without you guys. Would it matter if half the writers out there stopped writing? Not as much as if half the readers suddenly stopped reading. You have to be respected by authors, all of you, by every part of the machine. Don’t underestimate your power. By sheer will alone you have the power to change the market. Pick a book you love and tell everyone you know, they tell everyone they know, and suddenly this little pile of words that spoke to you has taken the world by storm. That is the power you have.
Writers shouldn’t be revered, yes, they should be respected for the hard work and perseverance that it takes to produce the goods because it is a long journey. But that journey has no destination without the reading community. Yes, writers are readers, they have to be, there’s absolutely no equivocation on that, but we’re not the most important ones.
The most important person in a writer’s world is… you. Not the guy next to you, not the guy running the country, not even the distributors and publishers who are slugging it out. Let them have their war. This is about you. I have to connect to you. I have to work hard, for you. No one else. I don’t do it because I think I’m going to tempt a million readers. I want to connect with you. I want my words to affect your life, even if only for a few seconds. I want them to provoke a reaction. I want your heart to beat faster, or I want it to spasm with sorrow. I want you to laugh. I want you to cry. I want you to care.
My characters don’t belong to me. They are yours, they are what is in your heart, and in your head. They are what you want them to be. All I do is assemble thoughts and scenarios, the emotion is yours, it’s in you, you make the story what it is.
So thank you for taking a risk. Thank you for reading. Thank you for infusing my stories with sensation. Your wonderful mind processes the words I put together and causes that sentiment to your senses. You see it, you feel it. You are the story. It is for you. You have my eternal gratitude.
Good luck on your adventures,
xSx
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