This is the second of the two missives that failed to publish last week. Enjoy

“Has popularity changed you?”

My smile stiffens to a rictus. To speak aloud is to misspeak, if you aim to be understood. I misstate, overstate, understate, break off. My interlocutor’s attention drifts – they were just “making conversation.” No clarifications, modifications, edits. Politicians are chained to talking points so they won’t misspeak (excepting, of course, the Nameless One, our eternal exception). Misspeak in print and I’ve only myself to blame.

My friend’s question irks. Granted, eighty times more folks are reading me today than eight months ago, but at least eighty times my total are reading Krugman, say, or in J.K. Rowling’s case, eighty times eighty times eighty. She’s popular. Our cherished sodality is but a molecule in an ocean of eyes!

And then there’s the irksome implication of his question, that quality is measured by quantity and, even worse, that I write to attract a crowd. Did my mentors – Montaigne, George Herbert, Thoreau, Emily Dickinson – seek popularity? They wrote to an invisible futurity, because they had to, not to cram a circus tent!

My irk hints at sensitivity on these points. Am I as pristine as I pretend? Why then do I hurry each dawn to check my stats and growl if they’ve flattened? Yes, I covet more readers: what writer doesn’t? But have I picked my topics or tarted up my prose to achieve that end?

Now I’m smiling at myself. Why this rampaging like Rumpelstiltskin? The question was innocent, meant to flatter. Lighten up!

And the answer has to be yes. Because everything changes us. One speaks differently to a room of chums than to stadium of strangers. The farther a voice must travel the less complexity it can carry. Also, the enthusiasm of my new friends emboldens. I feel less alone.

A readership is a congregation. Your attention weighs. You are giving me what’s most precious, your time. I’m determined not to waste it.

That makes me more careful and, paradoxically, more daring. To bore, for a writer, is a capital crime. We’re like chefs that way – one rotten meal and you might never return. I am brutal in my dismissal of unfamiliar writers – one strike and they’re out. The world is too rife with able writers to fritter time on mediocrities.

Is this change in me for better or worse? That’s for you to judge. For sure, it makes me jumpier than I was. Old pals may forgive, but why should you? My restless ambition stalks the world for topics that might tempt. I reread my sentences repeatedly, anticipating your scrutiny.

I also feel responsible as never before. This is the gift of the Nameless One: his evil enlists us, for or against. I want to demonstrate by what I make why our side is better: more honest, gracious, generous, decent, sane; that we can smile – and hug – and bless. By my zest I hope to show that humans may yet be good and civilization salvageable. The vileness of the hour imbues me with this newfound purpose. I do not write for the hell of it, I write against hell.

I am thus a propagandist. Each of us is. War promotes us to that importance. Willy-nilly, we represent our compatriots. We cannot sit this one out, for that is to betray the cause we favor. The Nameless One is our inadvertent benefactor: no one’s any longer on the shelf, awaiting removal. All must serve.

The more who read these words, the better I must make them – and their maker. So yes, my new readers, you improve me. Bless you for that.