I'm Getting Serious!

I wake up to "Morning Edition" on NPR every morning. Sometimes I want to just stick my fingers in my ears and not hear the latest about hurricanes, wars, and social problems. But this morning I heard something I really wanted to hear -- even though the snoring from the other side of the bed made parts difficult to remember.

There were some important book awards handed out last night, the kind that include an impressive statuette and a check. In my early-morning fog, it didn't catch most of the names, and others I am not even going to try to spell when I'm fully awake, but I heard a quote that stuck.

"Nobody is writing serious novels anymore." I don't know if that's true, or if serious novels don't fit into major publishers' schedules, but we have long decried the "lowest common denominator" philosophy we see on the bookshelves.

I hereby am making my stand! My current novel was dumped by my computer, so I am going to rewrite it as nitty-gritty and relevant. I'd been getting a little nervous about the ramifications of the premise that I was glossing over or ignoring. No more!

I'm going for the guts of the issue! If this is the last book I get to write, I want it to be the one that makes my great-grandkids proud. (Not that I have any great-grandkids yet, mind you, but I was referring to the long-range impact I hope this books makes. And just maybe the romance won't work out.)