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Two weeks ago, I was at the Momentum Youth Conference with a dozen youth. This year’s theme was “I Am Second,” or to put it in the words of John the Baptist, “He must become greater; I must become less” (John 3:30).
I have at least one selfish way I wish I could put this into effect. Sometimes, I wish I could remove my name from my works.
I find it difficult to promote my books directly. While I truly believe them to be good stories, I dislike the fact that when I sell a story, I am also compelled to sell myself.
Yes, I know that’s the way things work nowadays. You have to build your tribe. You have to create a presence. There are something like 1.26 billion books published in a year, and you can’t rely on the book selling itself. I understand that.
But I can wholeheartedly recommend The Illustrated Man or The Wheel of Time or Orthodoxy or The Brothers Karamazov to people who ask me what they should read. I have connected with these books on my own and I can freely, even energetically, encourage others to read them.
But how can I do that with my own book? How do you relate to your own work in that disconnected way? I’m not sure you can ever truly read a book you’ve written.
If there’s anything good in The Unremarkable Squire, I don’t want it to hinge on me being clever. As I mentioned in an earlier post, when I look back on things I’ve written, I’m usually impressed they’ve come out so well. The words and characters surprise me. The rough draft is a magic trick I perform without quite knowing the secret. By this I mean to say the book is something separate from myself. It has its own life. And that’s how I want to present it.
I’d much rather you’d come to know Obed, the namesake squire, than me. Because the book’s about him.
And, honestly, he’s a pretty interesting young man.
(Want to get to know him? Well, there’s this contest to win a free copy of the novel. Why not enter?)
[…] nor is it likely to be in our top ten. Our goal is not to make ourselves famous (believe me, some of us would certainly prefer to remain as anonymous as possible), but to share our stories with as many […]