The poet Charles Wright once told me that he, after lots of the why-do-I-do-this’ing we writers are prone to, found an answer. Or at least, his answer. He gave a poetry reading and at the end of it a nun came forward and showed him a locket. It held a copy of his poem “October.” Because, she told him, she wanted to die with that poem on her body.
And, he said, that was it. He’d found his ideal reader. And whatever publishing biz came along after it—rejections, acceptances, getting prizes, not getting prizes—sunk before this woman and her locket.
I write essays, poems, fiction, and books. Do they sell well? Well enough for me to be happy, but not any publisher’s idea of stellar. Do I make money? Hmmm, no. I’ve gotten several very small book advances and two decent ones. Considering the time spent on a book, even the decent ones come to pennies per hour, if that. The truth is that even when there’s the decent advance, I travel for my books, do research, buy books, turn down other paying work. I’ve probably lost money on every one. If I did something like drive for Uber, I’d make money and get the daily company of other people. Rather than my computer screen, ridiculous piles of paper, and a very bored kitty.
I found my ideal reader at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs annual conference, which is a strange place to find anything soul-nourishing. I forget which city it was in. This was pre-covid, during the years when AWP was enormous—think as many as fifteen thousand people. And intimidating. People not on panels wondered why they weren’t on panels, people on panels wondered why they weren’t giving readings, people giving readings wondered why they weren’t keynoting. That kind of thing. I always felt those who felt good about themselves at AWP probably were spoiled as children, though that may just be my own pique.
Then, while I did the thing I enjoyed doing, which is staffing the Bellingham Review table, I met that ideal reader. I don’t want to reveal too much of his story. I’ll just leave it at this: he told me he had conquered an addiction one summer, and part of what got him through it was reading one of my books over and over again.
Whatever in my book helped him was a smidge of me and a heap of goodwill from the universe, for both of us. But I’d had the experience Charles had. I met my ideal reader, and I really haven’t gone too far into the weeds of “why” since then.
When you sit at a table at a conference like AWP, you basically stand there grinning while humanity rushes by, hoping someone will want to stop and talk. It occurs to me now that this is pretty much what it means to be a writer—you stand around bashfully, hoping someone wants to extend that conversation you threw out into the void with your words. And if you do this long enough, I believe, you will also find your ideal reader.