Book

I am writing a book. It will be brilliant and have a profound impact on readers. That is if I make it heavy enough or it gets thrown with enough velocity. This is my first book and though I feel unqualified I figure it is now or never.

I get annoyed with a lot of the books I read because they tend to be filled mostly with theoretical garbage that has never had the opportunity to stretch and grow into life. They were written by somebody just out of school with visions of fame and fortune if they could only be published. And publish they did.

I lived in a developing country in Africa for several years and I remember an anthropologist from a prominent US University passing through. He was doing research and asked if I could take him to visit some village elders who could shed some light on their customs. As I sat and listened to the discussion my head began to spin at the stories that the elders were unloading into this academics notebook. I was shocked because I had never heard of such things even though I had lived there for some time. That's when I noticed some of the snickering coming from the darker recesses of the room. Glancing at the various faces in attendance I caught on that this unsuspecting discoverer was being fed a barrel of it. The book he probably wrote because of this encounter is probably misleading generations of wannabe anthropologists to this day. I have been leery of the "study for 6 months then publish" approach ever since.

Over the years I've had several people tell me that I should write a book. Well, make that two. One of those even went so far as to claim that they would actually read it. And they weren't even family members. That was several years ago but how can I ignore such encouragement.

So I am writing a book. I'm thinking I may even have a subject picked out in a year or two. A few years after that I'll probably have an outline. Decades later a highly polished, and heavy, work of brilliance will be available for all to enjoy. In the meantime I'm just going to tell everyone I'm writing a book.