Let Me Show You Some Magic

From 1975 until 1979, half of my annual income came from doing stage magic. Classed as "semi-professional" by the Society of American Magicians, I covered Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey mostly doing shows for nonprofits like churches and libraries. I had the money for a levitation and a guillotine and I had a killer mentalism routine. I also invented an illusion where two audience members cut another audience member in half using thick ropes. I'm retired from magic now, but it doesn't take much to get me to dust off the old props and do a show for a family-friendly nonprofit.

However, I'd like to do a magic trick for you now. Please read the following:

Marie blinked up at the bright pink Martian sky through the protective glassine dome. After a week in transit staring only at white spaceship walls, the sudden expanse gave her a touch of agoraphobia. I wonder if I’ll ever miss blue, she thought. I wonder if I’ll ever care.

“Miss?”

Marie jumped, staring at the customs officer. An android, he was humanoid in form, but clearly a robot. “Y…yes?” she asked.

“Do you have any baggage to declare?”

Marie sighed. “Only these two.” She motioned toward the two small carry-ons at her feet that contained her only possessions. Not to mention the twenty-eight years of baggage I carry in my head.

Now that, Gentle Reader, is my finest illusion. Using only 111 words, in your imagination I transported you to Mars where you have never been and put you into the head of a person you have never met and who doesn't exist. With just five paragraphs, I took you out of your reality and plopped you into one I created.

I have racked up some really nice magic shows. I have left audiences dumbfounded and I have received accolades and awe for my illusions. However, all of that is nothing compared to what I just performed for you right here on your computer/tablet screen.

This is why I love writing for you. This is why I write solely for entertainment. I don't want to change your life. I don't want to pound any philosophy into your head using my work as a bully pulpit.

I just want to do a magic show for you.

So hang on. I've done some nice shows for you in the past, but I'm working on some doozies. Stay tuned.

A Note of Encouragement for Writers

All writers come with baggage. 

If you suffer from procrastination, emotional and/or physical wounds, self-defeating or self-destructive behaviors, crippling moments of doubt and despair, there is something you need to remember.

Your reader knows nothing about this. They only see the finished product. 

Most of my readers don't know my professional vocation, my list of failures, my years of rejection slips, my failed manuscripts that I have buried as a service to humanity, or years of mental challenges caused by rampant depression. They only see my finished works, the stories that I have written for their enjoyment. 

And it's the same for you. Your readers see the work, not the writer.

When you write and your Internal Critic attempts to sabotage your work, with failures and shortcomings of the past and present, remind it that your readers don't know you and carry no suppositions or prejudices as they read your story whether it be a short story or a massive trilogy of encyclopedia-sized tomes.

They only see your plot, your characters, your world, and your tale as a whole.

So write your best because your present work uses your failures and successes of the past as energy and ideas and rest in comfort that your reader is only interested in your story, not who you are.