Book Worm

While the book in progress is the first I plan to publish commercially, I have written at book length  before. My previous work was technical manuals and the like, which we all know no one reads. Does anyone read the manual? Not just for computers, but for anything? Clue: I do. I think most people expect the uses of things to be instant and intuitive. That's why there was market for "common language" devices and software that would program a VCR.

Trade books are different from technical manuals, and also quite different from Blogs. I thought about doing a "best of Web ..." book, but I am glad I rejected that idea. I find other people's "best of ..." books boring. For example, I came across a "best of ..." collection by a well known NYT writer, but didn't buy it. I had read those opinions before. On the other hand, a rewrite of the same material in a more organized, larger form might have attracted me. If the author wanted to sell a book of essays (a form I like), then the essays would have to be de nouveau.

In rebuilding my reference library, I noticed that collections and "best of ..."  were  saleable in the post mortem market, if the author was sufficiently important. Notice the two qualifications that apply on the author: important and dead. I know I'm not important, and don't want to be dead. That seemed enough analysis to rule out a "best of ..." book. I wonder why some other prominent writers hadn't thought about that.

In the process, I found the book subtly changed from day 1 to day N. It started to have its own life. I was warned about that by a long-time friend, Roberta. I discounted Roberta's advice because she has been trying to get me to write a NOVEL for 20 years or so. I don't think I am a novelist, even if writing the Great American Novel seems a worthy project for someone else. Despite my deliberate ignorance, she was right. The fallout from that is now I have a huge editorial task, re-organizing all those words into some meaningful order that represents the final(?) evolution of the work. I need to tell the tale according to what the Tale seems to think it is. I take this experience as confirming my views about cultural evolution.

I would like very much for the book to sell. On the other hand, I fear the subjects I deal with are unpopular and, worse, my attitudes concerning those subjects are even more unpopular. Nonetheless, I have decided to stick to what I am and what I believe; not to pull the punches. The more I wrote, the more I became disgusted with a lot of trash I found "out there;" put there by Big Money, often with a political purpose. That moved me away from writing about current political issues. I am also put off by "as told to" books, which are almost invariably the work of some rich person and a toady. One result of the experience is that I am likely to focus this website away from the debacle du jour in the future.

Having got started on the book writing process, I find I am not finished. I am already scheming about the next book or two. In that I am in a race with death, as the diabolical Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy keeps getting worse (even though all my lab test "numbers" are reasonable). Of course, most people will be celebrate my limitations, since they will spared of the uninteresting things I am likely to write about; e.g., ethics and morals, culture and society, and the Theory of History. Advance warning: My lawyer told me he didn't dabble in "intellectual stuff," after I told him I was writing a book.

In writing this book, I did learn something about and for myself. I am profoundly circumstantial in my views. I don't believe in real Reality, absolute commands and duties, or gods, spirits and souls. I think of myself as descended from a small bunch of Homo sapiens, who were probably black and lived in West Africa 250,000 million years ago. I have learned there is very little truly "conscious" about people. To the extent that we are enlightened, moral creatures, it is entirely because we evolved to this point.

How do we control ourselves? A good question for another book.