HILARY’S HILARIOUS HOPES

Hilary's hopes were suspended above her keyboard, ready to take on any challenge she chose to place on the blank screen above it. Her head was choked with thoughts, saturated like a sponge, overflowing with unwritten words. Her mind was drowning in a sea of letters that she couldn't unscramble fast enough to form into coherent sentences; sentences that were impatiently waiting for Hilary to create. The computer monitor in front of her was staring at her, demanding that she wait no longer to display her unspoken creations on its empty surface.

Hilary had been at the mall yesterday and had stood before a window display at a popular bookstore. Stacks of books from the 'New York Times Best Sellers List' crowded the space and were doing their best to stay upright. Notices of upcoming events, where 'you could get a signed copy' were randomly taped to the window. Hilary had been disappointed to discover that the authors' main purpose in choosing the title for his or her book was one that would attract the most customers in order to make the most profit - books about: 'How To Succeed In The Business World', Secrets From an Ex-Government Official', 'Hidden Affair of Local celebrity Exposed', 'How To Improve Your Sex Life'. Readers were waiting for the next bestseller to be published so they could have something to talk about with their friends and their colleagues over the dinner table; something to be displayed on their glass-topped coffee tables.

Whatever happened to the great American novel? Whatever happened to novelists like Faulkner, Steinbeck, Galsworthy? Lee Harper, Charles Dickens, or Joseph Conrad? Authors who wrote with such passion and in such intricate detail that you believed you had just passed one of their characters on the street, or perhaps he was a neighbor who lived at the end of the road you lived on. Perhaps you entered a building or someone's home for the first time and you knew what you would find further down the hall because you had previously visited it as a guest of the author.

The screen before her remained empty. And to think for a minute that she was capable of writing the world's, or at the least, the next great American novel! Well, that was just crazy, right? That was just hilarious. Hilary began to laugh uncontrollably, and then she began to cry.