My friend Abbi stopped me at a conference in late-2008 and said, “you really should write a book. I believe in you.” Throughout the past few years, I’ve written quite a bit. I have a lot written that hasn’t been published to any blog. This blog has 330 posts since January of 2009 and the average word count per post is around 1200. In a couple more posts, I’ll have written 400,000 words to this blog alone with a combined two million words across all of my blogs beginning in 1999. My agent once told me that an average book should have between 35,000-50,000 words and there were concerns not with my ability to write that much but an ability to consistently deliver quality words throughout the book, cover to cover in a way to garnered positive reviews. This didn’t happen.
People that read my writings are extremely positive and enthusiastic about my posts. Each posts is read by a few dozen people (yeah, seriously) and not everyone reads each post. A few thousand people a month visit this blog and each post itself never passes 100 reads unless it’s about computers or Starbucks. Despite the low readership, every reader comes to me saying I’m a good writer. Friends and family say, “you’re a great writer and I love reading your posts. Keep it up.”
The encouragement is nice but, like a stand-up comedian I am always coming up with new material and my only complaint is that I don’t have enough time to blog about everything that comes tom mind. My blog’s sub-title is “thoughts and ideas from a guy with a blog” and that’s pretty much it. I’m not an expert and I don’t think everything I do is right but I love to write and express myself through words and that’s what this is.
So, being an author is something that I am. I embrace that I’m a photographer and author. It is a love of mine and one I’ll continue doing for a long time. The title of published author may never be in my future, but an author, there is no doubt. For a long time, there was this concept in my mind that being a published author was something I had to achieve but I don’t think that’s true anymore. What I do think is true is that the act of being published is about perfecting your work tirelessly until you have nothing else to give, walking away, drinking some tea, and giving some more. One day, your editor will finally say, “looks good.” and then you begin the tireless process of promoting this work.
The process of being published pushes your writing to another level and that’s something I’d like to experience one day.
In the meantime, I don’t feel like any less of an author simply because my name isn’t on the inside of a book jacket. That impression of ink on paper is simply a testament that I went through something magical to get there and I climbed a new hurdle. The plain fact that I’ve surpassed 1 million “published words” on the Internet is a huge deal to me. Only if 5% of the were quality enough to be printed, I’d have just enough for a book and that’s good enough for me.
One day, I’d like to go through that process of being printed. You can all see that I do have it in me, that commitment and love of writing to put a book together. Could I do a great job? Maybe or maybe not. It would be a fun experience. Hey, another 600 words down. I’m thankful that you take the time to read these. Thanks and goodnight.