Shared recently by a friend of mine (on one of those social networking sites), a heartbreaking story, but not for the reasons you might expect.

A pretty, young woman is riding the train, reading a book. The entire car is empty, except for her and a quiet, elderly gentleman near the back. A young man enters, his bicycle in tow, and sits down directly opposite the young woman, leans over and says, “What’ch’ya readin’?”

She glares at him, voice piercing, “Look!”

Shock.

A friend of mine remarked today (in a private online forum), “Once you’ve walked in the shoes I walk in, live the life I live, and feel the pain I feel, then you can judge me.”

This is a common sentiment, which has inspired some powerful stories, and which inspired some involved thoughts of my own (at almost one in the morning). I gather that this anonymous quote has been floating around the Internet. There’s a lot stuffed into that single, pithy thought. I’m not sure I buy into all of it. So I felt compelled to write this short note, expounding what I think is an important truth.

So, I’m putting together a newsletter. That is, a paper newsletter, to send to friends, family, fans, and readers–Sorry, I couldn’t think of a synonym for readers that began with F–since I now have a solid list of people who would (probably) like to hear from me occasionally. The idea is to include a short-short story, a book blurb or review, a writing tip, maybe a guest article or interview, kicking off each quarterly issue with a seasonally relevant “letter from the editor” (that’s me). My first, aborted attempt turned into this blog post. Aborted, because too heavy, too serious. But look at the bright side: at least I know what I want.

I had a notion to start a newsletter back in October 2008. I rambled on for four full pages about news media, advertising, politics, terrorism, and how we’d all live longer if we’d just relax. At the time, it seemed appropriate to the Halloween season. In retrospect, I still agree with everything I wrote, but why did I have to be so boring about it?

Since then, I’ve authored two more books, started a third, and published uncounted posts and stories online. The newsletter idea remained, but why bother? Whenever I thought about it, I concluded that I really had no idea who I even wanted to be as a writer, and I couldn’t for the life of me imagine why anyone on God’s Earth would possibly care.

Then it hit me.