November 11, 2022
Dear Great Grandson,
If you write something, and nobody reads it, does it exist? Is writing even a thing in the future or do you just have to think something and it appears on some futuristic pair of eyes?
This is my biggest issue with creating content. I appreciate everybody and anybody who has read my book and/or visits my website, but laboring over a post for hours, sometimes days, only to publish and then have nobody read it is disappointing, not to mention it being a really poor ROI. As a self-published author I tell myself that I write because I enjoy writing. I tell others, “I don’t care if I sell even a single copy”. But I lie. I do enjoy writing, but not enough to keep doing it if I’m the only one enjoying it!
Unfortunately, I can’t force people to view my writing, let alone pay for it (unless their family. Perhaps, like many great authors before me (e.g. Lovecraft, Melville, Wilde, O. Henry, and Edgar Allen Poe), my work will be appreciated more by readers unborn.
These were my thoughts when I heard one of my favorite musicians, Shakey Graves, sing the verse in his song “Roll the Bones” that goes, “Yeah, and sell your belongings. All your clever drawings. Try to make a dollar from the grave.”
That’s why I decided I would begin writing to you, my yet-to-be-conceived (YTBC) Great Grandson. Enjoy!
This is your Great Grandpa Thurm telling you to tell your father that you love him and good bye.
(Editor’s note: Before anybody goes all “Karen” on me, understand that in my mind I’m writing to my YTBC Great Grandson, but it could just as easily be my YTBC Great Granddaughter! I love all my YTBCs equally.)