After 5.5 years of writing hopefully witty, hopefully insightful, hopefully-informative-to-new-readers, yet hopefully still-interesting-to-longtime-ones Editor’s Letters in each issue of the magazine, I’m thinking of handing my Ed Letter off to our amazing Heather Mueller, and beginning to write a hopefully-soon-published novel about the first generation of Americans to grow up Buddhist.

I’m a writer, first and foremost, and I’d love to do some real writing for the magazine. We made the decision to cut the Editor’s Letter last week—but then this Saturday night, shooting pool at The Attic, a local college haunt (I was there, appropriately, to celebrate the 34th bday of my childhood ‘Dharma Brat’ buddy Jesse Grimes), a lady walked up to me, introduced herself, and said “I loved your last editor’s letter, it was honest and blahdeeblahdeewhatsit…” Now, taking into account that she might’ve been tipsy, and my editor’s letters are full of sh*t, they do probably serve a pragmatic function—to introduce and contextualize “the mindful life” in terms of whatever ever our main theme is that issue (gay rights, bike riding, yoga…).

So, in time-honored e-democratic fashion, I’ll leave it up to you. Please visit elephantjournal.com, click on “blog of the day” and leave us your comments.

Option 1: continue with my Editor’s Letter.
Option 2: start serializing novel, “Dharma Brat”
Option 3: find room to do both
Option 4: cut both; quit elephant and go into silent meditation retreat for a year
Option 5: hand off editor’s letter to Heather, who’s an incredible writer, and serialize novel

Yours,
Waylon Lewis, publisher