That Novel You Have in You... Maybe It Should Stay There

by Nancy Faulkner Sackheim

Do you have a novel inside you?  Of course you do.  Doesn't everyone?  Should you write it?  Cynics will say no.  Don't even think about it.  Keep it inside you, where it belongs!

Say what they will, that decision, my writing friend, rests with no one but you.   However, before you decide, a few items to consider:

Over 50,000 new works of fiction are published annually in the U.S. That's 50,000 added every year to the hundreds of thousands already in print.  (R.R. Bowker publishing statistics) 

The majority of traditionally published novels sell only a couple thousand copies (if that) over their lifetime, if they actually make it into a bookstore.  (Nielsen BookScan)

17% of published authors did not earn any money in 2013. ("The Business of Being an Author" report)

If none of the above gives you pause, and you happen to write the most beautiful  prose in the English language and (somehow) get your genius published, the reading public (what there is of it) is free to ignore it... one in four Americans did not read a book at all last year, let alone a novel! (Pew Research Center survey)