"You should write a book!"
If I had a dollar for every time I have heard someone say that, I could retire to some tropical island and sip drinks with little parasols for the rest of my life, without even having to write a book!
I'm now on the north side of 65 years of age, and it seems unlikely that I will write that book. Or any book.
The interesting conundrum here is that the people suggesting that I write this infamous book have generally only read an article or two of mine and somehow decided they like my writing style and thus would like to read a whole book!
Alas, while I'm flattered that's not how it works! When you're writing articles, you only have to be interesting, relatable or funny for a thousand words or so, while for a book you have to be interesting for 80,000 words or more.
Yes, I love writing, buy I have never seriously considered what I could write a book about, given my varied and esoteric interests. And I honestly don't know why anyone would be interested.
But just for grins, I suppose what makes the most sense would be something about my strange and rootless childhood. We did live a pretty unusual life, after all. But — again — why would anyone care?
I guess the real learning here is that I only like writing when I think it's fun. Which probably has its roots in my years spent as a technical writer, where I was definitely writing, but it wasn't my writing and I had very little say and what it was I was creating.
And then, of coure, there's the slippery slope of navigating what you want to write, vs. what is "popular."
I have never really understood "popular" writing, regardless of whether it's fiction or non-fiction. And maybe it's just ego or maybe it's practicality, but why the heck write a book if people aren't going to read it?
I mean, I would be doing it simply to prove that I like writing... I have almost 2,800 Hive posts to inform the world of that, and writing a book is not going to strengthen that argument!
Maybe I also have to confess to my personal biases. I can usually tell the difference between a book written because someone is passionate about a story or a topic, and a book written because someone knows how to generate formulaic "word soup" because they are doing so purely "for a living."
While I won't argue that it's not nice to make a living, I'm a bit of a stickler for doing so for the right reasons.
And I just can't bring myself to believe that regurgitating a weird and troubled childhood constitutes a "right reason." I'm not even convinced it would be particularly cathartic.
I've heard it said that we often know in our childhood what we really want to do with our lives. And there was definitely a part of me that wanted to grow up and "tell stories" when I grew up.
But I think I'm better off just sticking to sporadic short stories...
Thanks for stopping by, and have a great Friday!
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Created at 2026.03.12 23:32 PST
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