The Humble Author
L ast week, I alluded to the fact that pride looks for one’s own success at the expense of others, while humility seeks the success of others. I was speaking primarily about authors because authors struggle over the issue of praising their own work. Looking at my own work, the two non-fiction books are very clearly books that are designed to help other people. But it’s never so clear when we look at novels. If our goal should be to help others, what should a novelist be doing? The traditionally published author can say he’s helping the publisher’s employees put bread on the table. But even the most haughty author can make that claim. We would hope that there would be something significantly different between the haughty author and the humble author. If the author puts aside pride and takes on humility, we would like to see some change that takes place in the way he does things. With novels, it’s all about the story, so any difference will show up there. I think the difference betwe...