Wonderin' Aloud

 

From Saturday’s Walk

Read an interesting piece the today over a “Dark Futura”.  But it got me a thinkin’ about my own writing and reading habits/addictions.  Mostly,  I am wondering about the desire to actually publish a book.  

I suppose that the ability to “spin a yarn” should be enough.  But even more than that, I think that the process of writing a book is part and parcel of a culture and way of thinking that is having a lot of trouble hanging on.

Writing a book today is a way of pissing into a big, big ocean. When I was pupped, the act of writing a book and getting it published was a significant accomplishment.  The number of books published and the distribution system of getting that writing spread about to the population was orders of magnitude lower (books published) and significantly more constrained (distribution channels) so writing a book had considerably greater impact financially and societally.  

I am reminded of the sudden onrush of self-published memoirs of WWII veterans in the fifties.  There was a rapid increase in the recognition that writing was “do-able” and there were means of publication that was available to the hoi polloi.  But that by no means implies that the great bulk of those tomes were worth reading.

So now I am sitting around thinking about the whole idea of writing and its relationship to my mental health and my monthly expenses.  This requires a good solid think.  I really don’t expect that money for writing is going to come out on top as my primary motivation.  I think that for a while, the familiarity of having a deadline gave me a comfort level that allowed me to churn out some verbiage, but then I finally came to the realization that I was retired and that I no longer needed a raison d’etre to get up and accomplish something every day.  That is when the weekly updates started to fall apart.  I am flipping retired, I don’t really need to deliver anything to anyone.

To wind up this days overlong and rambling piece, I think that I will be spending some time thinking about the niche where I reside in the now Brobdingnagian pool of symbols attempting to convey meaning that is the written history of our age.  What I am absolutely certain of is that it in no way is a meaningful action to anyone but me.