My book

"You know, it seems to me that someone that writes as well as you do should look in to doing it in a more formal way. I just want to come to the first book signing so that I can tell everyone that I told you to 'go girl.'" -- a dear friend in a recent email.

"You should write a book." I have heard that often enough, and sometimes it comes from people whose sanity I have observed and whose judgment I trust and admire. It's flattering, and I hope that if I ever *do* write a book, it turns out they were right and what I produce was worth putting in print.

I've occasionally taken the suggestion seriously enough to spend some of those decidedly self-indulgent, randomly reflective moments before sleep wondering if there is "a book in me."

There may be. I'm simply not sure. I have yet to find it there folded behind a memory or misfiled with a favorite self-doubt... at least not labeled in a way I can recognize. I suppose I shall have to keep looking.

By now I have done quite a lot of writing. My blogs are really only one example, since I write for work and sometimes write for pleasure in other less public places. I've also read several books on "the craft" and have taken some of the wisdom I have gleaned quite seriously. Among the bits of advice I chose to take seriously: write. write often. Hence the writing on and on and on, even when I have nothing to say that is worth reading. For a writer, there's merit to writing -- just writing. At least that is what they say.

Still, even writing that I am a "writer" feels presumptuous. Yes, I have been published. Yes, I get paid to write. Yes, I edit the writing of "real" writers. Yes, I have people come to me for advice who want to become writers. No, I can't wrap my head around the declarative sentence, "I am a writer."

No matter. I write anyway. And I continue riffling halfheartedly through my brain in search of the book that some believe is in there somewhere. And I write some more.

Here is where, for the present, I'll store some of the other things I encounter in the search for my book. Here is where I will place the gibberish that comes to mind and hand. I make no rules. I place no limitations.

I invite you to read if you like, but please know that I am really writing for me, and if you happen to find my scribblings worth reading, it's a marvelous accident. Who knows, perhaps, someday, one of those marvelous accidents will transform into a page in my book.