As I was driving home this evening, I was thinking about dedications. I've thought a lot about dedications in the past, it's one of the things I look forward to being able to do, i.e., putting out for the world to see that I value a certain person (or my memory of them, if they're deceased). But -- of course -- this requires that a book actually be published, since a dedication note on a private manuscript isn't exactly telling the world anything.

In each of my books, I've at least jotted down one dedication, and sometimes the dedication has changed several times over the course of my work on the novel. My two most-recent novels, however, both were started for NaNoWriMo and both have very specific dedications. Now, however, I'm a little concerned about what's "expected" of me when it comes to a dedication. Will I offend someone if they're not the recipient of a dedication? This concerns me a bit with these two manuscripts, because they're dedicated to two people who are not family members nor have I seen them in over 20 years (one of whom is deceased, and who others probably would not "connect" with me). I think the dedications are highly appropriate, but what if others disagree?

What I really need to do is publish a large number of novels, so that I can work through all the dedications I'd like to use! Not all dedications need to be manuscript-specific; for example, I'd like to dedicate at least one novel to the memory of my brother. I'd like to dedicate another to the memory of a friend I lost while I was stationed overseas. Neither of those would necessarily be associated with a particular manuscript. (I did dedicate by book of short stories, Journey to Yandol, and other stories, to the memory of my brother, but it's just a CafePress book seen by a very small audience, so it doesn't count.)

Anyway, I think a dedication is a very personal choice, and in that sense I wonder why I would even be concerned what others might think. It's my novel, my work, my creative "blood, sweat, and tears," so the "reward" of choosing to whom it will be dedicated should be mine and mine alone. Right? Or is this vague sense of obligation to dedicate to the "correct" people more correct?

This blog post ain't dedicated to anybody, so I don't step on any toes... :-/