Over at Making Light, Teresa Nielsen Hayden discusses the sad fate of most books and authors in the long run (and unfortunately for so many, in the very short run). Yes, our works and we, the creators, are most likely to be forgotten by the public long before copyright expiration or heirs and estate dispute issues kick in.

Teresa says:

"The literature taught in schools is that which has survived: a collection of gross statistical anomalies. This is misleading. Falling out of print is a book's natural fate. We can belatedly train ourselves to believe that this will happen to other people's books. What's hard is for writers to believe it will happen to their own."

Considering this, wouldn't it make wise sense for all of us who write to strive to create works that might transcend their time, the kind of future classics that are not merely taught in schools to bored children but are honestly beloved by many generations? After all, isn't one of the most pressing reasons we write is to communicate (and hence transport) ourselves to others -- not merely our contemporaries, but those who will come after?

Sure, we might all say, I would love for my writings to be read several decades, or better yet several hundred years from now, to be considered fodder for tomorrow's Masterpiece Theater (or E-Theater Holo-4D in Trans-Dimensional Space). Who wouldn't?

And yet, in the back of our minds, most of us seem to settle for second best, for "whatever" and "let me just produce this piece and see what happens." We live in the moment, and we work in the moment, and our work, needless to say, reflects the moment.

Only the moment. And that's our shortcoming.

This may be a bit late in January to be making New Year resolutions, but why not take this opportunity to resolve to create timelessness with every fiber of your being? Why not put your spirit and full attention into the selection of detail, to pour the finest shot of meaning into all you write, whether it be high-lit or genre or the words on the inside of a greeting card? It's never too late! Take this moment; begin now.

There are no guarantees, and luck plays a part in what is remembered over what is forgotten. But we can at least do the utter best with what we have in our means.

Write outside the ephemeral moment. Write beyond, into the great permanent time stream in which you float.

Don’t just send out a flimsy sailboat into the literary future, but start carving a dam, or laying bedrock for your very own island in the history stream.

On an amusing side note, here is an Amazon Short story of mine, "Old Farts" which gives a possible solution to the problem of having one's books go out of print and out of sight….