An open (but unsent) letter, to all those “serious” people (writers and otherwise) who have belittled my work:

I am a writer, I suppose, with all that entails. I may be a novelist, an author, a poet, a madman, and a lover of words. I am a fantast, and that is enough. You may believe your works to be important, or illuminating. You may believe my works shallow and pandering. You have, at times, said as much. I may produce reams of written words, but more importantly – most important of all – I tell stories. We owe it to ourselves, and to one another, to tell stories. On the bus, about the bus, in the crush of a midsummer night's traffic accident, we will tell stories.

Your desires and dreams, purposes and mighty plans, they shine like a bright metal ball against a jeweler's velvet. Mine, in comparison, are not much more than a rustic's scenery – a festive (and you would urge, soon discarded) pine cone on a holiday tree. But if ever you must swallow your shining ball, it would perhaps settle, cold and hard and heavy, into your stomach. I think I will bury mine even in the cold land, like a weathered and storied Nord, and hang my universe from its singing branches.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't search around and look for the "coolest" book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.

"We must go and confront him."