It's confusing.  Everybody loves new things . . . new clothes, new cars, new cell phones.  People pay money to get a new cell phone every year or every week!  It's a passion!  But wait a minute.  Those new things are from well known brands . . . Apple, Toyota, Michael Kors!  Are they really new or are they just . . . I don't know . . . an improvement on something existing?  (I've always wondered how something could be 'New and Improved!'  Can you improve something that didn't exist?)

But what about things that are truly new like the first radio, the first airplane, the first telephone?  It took awhile for those innovations to be accepted.  The same thing is true for new artists or writers.  A new book by a known author is much easier to take a chance on than a new book by an author you've never heard of.  It's another attrition filter.  There are thousands of new writers out there trying to get someone to pay attention to their new book.  I don't know if this is a fact, but the average new book sells less than 100 copies.  Like most things, if a writer doesn't get encouragement, they will often lose faith in their ability, and they will stop writing - moving on to something else.  Who knows how many really good writers have simply stopped writing.

But maybe NEW could be made into an asset!  Like a rookie baseball card!  What if you had the Ernest Hemingway rookie writer card?  Or the John Updike rookie card?  What would those be worth on Ebay?  It could come in a package with a flat piece of the pink, yuckie chewing gum!  The card could be for the book and the team could be the writer.  Or we could form writer teams like the New York Novelists or the Cape Cod Psychological Thrillers or the Maniac Mystery Writers!

I don't know.  You get a little punchy being creative over a hot keyboard!