True to my word, I have been reading more than I have been writing this year. I read Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres for the thousandth time, but this time I studied it, marking each scene. Then I paid my friendly neighborhood library a visit. It’s noisier there than I would like, but the deeper you get into the fiction section the noise fades to a distant drone. I wandered the aisles, pausing to grin at the placement of author Virgin next to author Virtue. I walked more and more slowly until I stopped altogether and surveyed the spines. Most of them were dusty. Many were faded. I wondered how many of them had been checked out recently, or ever. Most of the authors were foreign to me. I wondered when the Library would come though and weed out the underused books, the old and out-of-date books. What treasures would remain locked inside those books, hidden from the patrons, because some newly published writer (me?) had displaced them with their own shining jewels. It’s sad, really, the life cycle of a book. So few burn steadily into the literary canon; most are supernovas, blazing out all at once.

What will I be? Does it matter? Because I will still mourn the unloved books hiding on the shelves, hoping that they are not the weeds that will be pulled.