Keep those cards and letters coming.

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Writers construct a world. Good writers make those worlds coherent and consistent. It can be science-fiction or it can be Faulkner - either way, the reader recognizes the constructed world and feels that he or she has entered it when reading. Lesser writers may try to do the same thing, but they invariably end up repeating themselves rather than actually creating something. And of course I stand quite strategically placed among the ranks of those lesser writers, particularly when I refer (again and again) to my eight or so readers. That highly limited readership has become an ongoing theme of these pages, enough so that occasionally I find myself unsure whether I really want my readership to expand. Why not keep it All in the Family, with easily identifiable in-jokes, rather than try and reach a mass audience?

And yet it happens that people whom I never assumed read these columns (even if they're on my mailing list) will, when I meet them either in work or recreation oriented settings) suddenly remark on the latest column and I'll ask "what? you mean you read the Boidem?" and they'll respond "of course". One person, whom I met for the first time at a work related meeting a couple of years ago even came up to me and asked me if I was the person who wrote the Boidem columns. Honestly, I was flattered.

So though I don't expect people to e-mail me once a month and tell me they enjoyed the column, frankly I wouldn't mind if every so often they went to the trouble to click on a link and let me know that they read it.

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Go to: My greatest fear.