"To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all."
                        - Lord Byron

Writers cannot withdraw themselves from their writings. It doesn't work. Sure we might read a story in which the characters, action, and dialog captivate us for three hundred pages or more, but then we are done. Whether in genre, voice, grammar, punctuation, or style, the writer is there in his story, and then there's the cover. Go to any bookstore and look at the bestsellers. Most titles are small compared to the names of their authors.

Today, Lord Byron's quotation is long out of date; it reads like he wrote it when the earth was still flat. Byron was a poet and, in his defense, readers seek themselves in poetry instead of the poet. In books they seek the story, and that is where they always find the writer. Poets withdraw and writers advance.

© 2009, Steven R. Lundin, all rights reserved