Turning in My Quill Pen and Ink

It takes a lot of perseverance to write a book. I should know because I have finished ten of the things. It would have been easy, so easy to lay a half-written book aside and promise myself I would get back to it some day. And then wait for that day to come. It never comes, you know. I had to be motivated.

Most of the books I wrote were non-fiction. They contained stories that I knew had to be told. Just had to be told before I kicked the bucket. No one else could have told those stories. I may have made some of those stories into fiction for various reasons (there are always reasons for not publishing a story including “it might offend someone”).

Making them into fiction is just a slight extra demand on the author. Some of us are mere reporters and do not know how to do anything but list events and the people who caused them. There is very little challenge in just reporting.

Anyway, at almost the end of my trail, I think I’ll quit writing books. Even though there’s some modest glory in being America’s least-read writer, I don’t care. I only know that on my bookshelf is a collection of nine, soon to be ten, books. And lots of articles as well. I wrote them.

As I said, the stories had to be told. Not telling them created pressure. Now the pressure is off.

The books are like paintings. You can look at them and like them or not like them. It doesn’t matter. They are there, ten books that weren’t anywhere fifteen years ago. They contain ideas and remembrances and historical details for any and all to see. What’s more, the books are edifying and nearly every word is spelled correctly.

There was a time when I was just starting out in the literary world at age seven. In those days my goal was to read a complete book. It was hard to read them all the way through and I knew I would be proud of myself if I could concentrate long enough just to read every page. Eventually I reached that goal and that began my life-long love of books.

How many times did I wander into my college’s book store and smell the wonderful aroma of paper and paste and whatever it is that makes a new book smell so good? My romance over the years never flagged.

Sometime during my college experience, though, I began to look at books differently. There was a time when, if I didn’t understand a book, I would put it down and think I was too dumb. After my MBA degree, the truth hit me: if I could not understand a book, I would lay it aside and say to myself, “That author can’t write.” But I still loved books. They had to be well written, however.

During my first fifty years never did I dream I would be able to write a book. I did not even want to write one because I realized I was not of the writer class, I was of the reader class. Most of us are that way. But then I turned over several rocks in my family history foundation and there they were—the stories that had to be told.

Now I have done my duty. I have told the stories of murder and war and struggle during WWII followed by the Space Race and the Cold War. It is someone else’s turn. I will not listen to any more stories, much less tell them. Now I am content to read very well written books, preferably new ones that have crisp clean pages.

Don’t offer me something on the Internet. I hate computer screens. I just want to turn pages and look at black words on white pages, words that can bring back memories or cause me to dream great dreams. I think I have earned that privilege.
It may take a lot of perseverance not to write another book, but I believe I will win out.

I think the literary world will survive. After all, I still have my blog to work on, and the Genealogy blog as well, and maybe an engineering magazine or two.