No comment!

In which I ask you, Dear Reader: What's up? Do you really not have anything to say to me? I look at the past week's carefully crafted blog entries and see the same disappointing (not to say ungrammatical) statistics: "0 comments ... 0 comments ... 0 comments." Am I typing my thoughts into the void of the internet, with no one reading them?

What's the big deal?, you may ask. It's just a blog. Well, if I wanted my writing to be ignored, I would send it out to agents and publishers and wait for their rejections. (Oh, wait, I already do that.) I was talking with someone about the frustrating process of finding a publisher the other day, and they said, "Oh, so you want to be famous?" I shook my head no, because that's not it at all. Fame/success/money might be nice (or might not be), but what I really want is to be heard.

I was reading Stephen King's On Writing the other week—a very entertaining as well as informative book about the craft—and he had the perfect metaphor for the act of reading. When you read something, he noted, you're engaging in telepathy with the author. If I describe something—say, a large, growling tiger—and you read my description, a picture is being transmitted from my mind to yours. The more details I include—the growling tiger is wearing a large purple tutu around its hips, and dancing an Irish jig atop a grand piano—the more similar our pictures become. Reading is an act of magic, because you can engage in telepathy across continents and cultures and even centuries. When I write something, I'm trying to create magic.

So when you don't comment, I don't know whether I've successfully brought the rabbit out of the hat, or if it got stuck somewhere below the brim. You don't have to be clever, or wordy. A simple "hi" will do. I'd even take "that's completely stupid," because at least it would mean you're reading. You don't have to be a Blogger member to comment. You don't even have to leave your name (although it would be nice). But let me know you're out there, Dear Reader, so I know if we're making the magic happen.