I’ll tell you what led me to the thought: At work today I had to get a hold of B. Dalton (the bookstore), and the number was disconnected. It filled me with worry and speculation. We live in the digital age. We pass our days in a world where we read books off of a screen, and buy the books off of a website. Book stores are swiftly becoming expendable. We all know about Barnes & Noble and Border’s troubles. What if, one day, there are no more bookstores? Would literate sales rapidly decrease? Would agents fall off the map? Would it be nearly impossible to become an author, and have that dream of publication come true?
Perhaps I’m buying trouble, but all the worry led me to discover something: Even if the world does somehow become an illiterate place, I would still write. Not because I want people to read it—which I do—and not because it’s some biological inclination. It’s because I want to. Writing provides more than the initial rush of excitement when beginning a story, it provides more than a brief escape. Writing is a constant. The one thing I can count on, the one thing I can control. Even if we’re surrounded by people that don’t understand, this is ours.
We are writers. If it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter if the world doesn’t know it. So, deep, profound question for the day: Would you write, if it was just for yourself?
