Besides editing, I've been doing a lot of thinking about writing. Some of it has been in my mind a long time. Some fairly new.
Anybody can write.
That's a pure fact. It's not an art particularly but a skill and with training and caring, anybody can write. It's part of human abilities; and if you spend much time online, you see good writing many places.
Not anybody can write a book.
Anybody might think they can, but it's more complex than it sounds. A book means putting words together to be more than they were apart. A book has a beginning, middle and end. It has a direction and goes somewhere with a purpose. It is long enough to qualify technically to be more than a short story or novella. Not anybody can do this.
Even less can write a book that others want to read.
Here's where the rubber really hits the road as with a computer program today, probably a lot more people could turn out a book than do, but those books are often formula writing. People can copy the plots of someone else with some differences and turn out a book. BUT how many of them will prove to be books someone else wants to read? Actually whether it's formula writing or from the soul, still who can guarantee that a book will be one someone else will consider worth their time to read or put out their money to buy?
Okay so it's not great genius thinking but heck, it's the middle of summer. Not exactly a time for great in depth thinking at least not on my part. More a time to lie back and enjoy the [meteor showers] which will begin tonight and some say will be at their peak Sunday and Monday nights. I need a nice dark space which isn't as easy to find as one might think with so many country folk addicted to night security lights. I'll check that out though tonight from the back of the pick-up.
Photo from a couple of years ago in Tucson with a mourning dove doing what she could to turn out a new generation using a time old system.
