A recurring theme in my life lately is the suggestion I write a book. "You should write a book!" I am told. "I wish you would write a book," my friends inform me.
And I ask myself, Do they have any idea what they're wishing for? What sort of book is it that they would expect me to write? Something funny and light? Brisk and witty? Insightful and thought-provoking?
I can't help suspect if I
did write a book it would be entirely unlike anything they were looking for. Perhaps I don't really have any solid evidence for this suspicion, but I do think a book is a very different thing from a forum post, a blog entry, or a status update. It is, well,
longer and more difficult. To complete such a task it is reasonable I would need a very different set of motives and somehow I'm skeptical "I'm writing this for
so-and-so" could see me through.
No, in fact, the only person I love enough to write a book for would be myself. And the book I would want to write would somehow, I think, tap into some very deep, hidden, and strange places within me, perhaps revealing a side heretofore concealed. It may shock my friends; anything coming out of my head probably wouldn't qualify as "shocking" relative to what is already available in literature, but it may, in fact, be surprising coming from
me.
A dear friend once said people saw me as "dark" and at the time I was taken aback. But in the years since I do have the impression I have grown more twisted and cynical. And I have always had a passion for black humor, sober music, and the tragic. I have always seen the world as a basically fallen place, the deepest blackness only intermittently punched through by the smallest shards of light.
Any work of mine would reflect this, or be exhausting I attempt to be something I'm not.
I don't have any basic desire to surprise or disappoint, but I think I don't have the ability or energy to produce what is sought. Really, I have no reason to believe one way or the other, that people would like or dislike what I create. But I know it would almost certainly not be what is asked for, and I think it only fair to warn you.
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