I was poking through the liner notes to Colbie Caillat’s album BREAKTHROUGH today, and I found this:

“These songs can mean whatever you want them to mean, they are now yours.”

I love that—because I believe any sort of art is transformed by the experiencing of it. We each bring our own experiences and life viewpoints to art. No two people hear the same exact song or feel the same exact way when they listen to it. The same thing goes for looking at paintings, and eating a gourmet meal, and… reading a book.

And yet we authors are often asked what messages we wanted to convey in our book. And goodness knows that countless hours have been spent in literature classes, debating exactly what The Author wanted the reader to see behind their words. Doesn’t this imply that authors want to control their audience and their experience? That we want to pick up their puppet strings and tell them how to feel and what to think when they read our stories?

Sure, CANDOR has some things to say about individuality and the dangers of control. But that’s my read of the book. Somebody else might find that my story says something different to them. And that’s just fine with me. It’s just as valid as my opinion.

Don’t get me wrong—I think there’s great value in discussing literature and the author’s intent. But I bet if you sat down with 10 authors and asked them to say, honestly, what they hoped to accomplish with their book…. you know what they’d say?

“I hoped it would be a good read. And I hoped someone would publish it. And that lots of someones would read it.”

If we’re lucky, our readers will feel strongly about our work. And they’ll make it their own.