Living with your defeat

The other day I was in a thrift store on Camp Bowie, in the old side of Fort Worth. Go down the right streets in Fort Worth and you travel backwards through time, to ancient diners and barbershops and roadside motels out of picture books and 1950s B-movies. I was standing in this thrift store, somewhere in 1969, looking at the collection on $2 books on the shelves on the back wall. And I had a thought.

There were all kinds of books there. Horror and history, cooking and crime,  everything from J.D. Salinger to Stephen King. Some of the books were made into movies, some of them were published by little printing outfits that fell away in time, blockbusters and no-names on the same shelf. But that’s the point: They were all on the same shelf, in a thrift store, sold for $2.

I think we all labor under the desire to be timeless. To write something great and be remembered, or to publish something profitable and be successful. Your mileage may vary, but it comes down to doing something that people will love, in one form or another. We want to be something more than just ourselves, in our little houses and hometowns. We’re all rushing around, trying to find agents and publishing contracts, following trends and trying to break into the market and make a name for ourselves in these crowded rooms. We want to be storytellers, astronauts and rock stars, because we want to live forever in our words. There’s nothing wrong with that.It’s one of those things that makes human beings such an interesting bunch to spend time with, I think.

But at the end of the day, you and me, J.D. Salinger and Stephen King? No matter how beloved we are, no matter how treasured we are, whether for a day or for a hundred years, we all end up at the thrift store. Somebody may love our words for a while, and even if a lot of people cherish our work, a lot of other people will still put us aside, saved for the thrift bin to make room for the next big thing. We all have a small window of opportunity to make a mark on this world (around 70 years or so) and it’s up to us to do all we can with this time before we’re pushed aside.

Knowing this, I feel free. It makes me want to work just that much harder on my stories, try to reach that many more people. If I’m enough lucky I’ll end up with a publishing deal, and if I’m not, I’ll find another way. This is what I chose for myself. All I can hope for now is to keep working and to write something somebody will love enough not to throw in the thrift bin. If I can do that, I feel like I’ve come out ahead.

Don’t you?