On Par with Pepys

I have a confession to make. I have to write. I am driven to write. It's the critical overflow outlet for the tangential ramblings of my brain. It's more than a hobby. I could have gone with any other of a myriad of stress-relieving pastimes, ranging from needlecraft, which may have been a modified body-piercing experience, to bodybuilding, but you'd have to needle me to get off the couch. And those would have been productive outlets, but I chose writing. Actually, I suspect that it chose me.

It's not that I write well. It's not that I write anything really interesting to anyone but me. I just have to spill thoughts onto paper so I don't dirty up the floorboards of my mind. Things kind of swirl around in there, morphing into other creatures, and I have to release them at some point. Otherwise I don't have room for the arrival of the next shipment of ruminations. Not to fear, though. It's mostly innocuous. I've never labeled any writing a manifesto, diary, or "my struggle." It's not that politics are off-limits it's just that with 100 million Americans spilling political jargon there are 100 million different definitions of what those terms mean. It's the modern Tower of Babel. So I mainly avoid politics because I pretend that I'm actually writing to someone else and not at them.

Even so, I'm not really worried about offending anyone. Nobody sees my scribblings anyway. I recently backed up one of my hard drives and found almost a gigabyte and a half of writing in My Files. And that's not counting business documents, spreadsheets, pdfs, images, or any other file in a subfolder. That's just straight up Rick's Stuff writings in either WordPerfect or MS Word. From my calculations a good sized book is about 5 megabytes. So doing the math, where 1 GB is roughly 1000 MBs, and if a book is about 5 MBs, that would mean that I have about...um, well, I don't remember how to do all the theorems and proofs, but it's like a lot of books.

You would think with such an impressive voluminous tome there would be something publishable in there. Theoretically, even monkeys banging on the keyboard would produce something publishable by the 1 GB mark. Which is my segue to confession número dos – I hardly ever finish anything. I believe that every project that I've ever finished is the result of time running out. Deadlines are practically my only proof of life; that, and seven children.

This stems from three compatible character flaws. 1) I procrastinate anything procrastinatable (see note below). I've been wondering for 25 years what I want to be when I grow up. And that's counting from when I legally became an adult. Non-legally, I'm still waiting. About two years ago I'm lying in bed staring at the ceiling and I casually comment to my wife, "I think I want to be a writer." The reaction was startling. "WELL, HALLELUJAH!" she said, "You've finally decided." I think I stress out the people around me. I also stress out my hard drive. There are too many outlines and fragmented notes haunting the folders of my computer. I'm afraid that if I ever finished one of them the computer may just go into a spontaneous fireworks screensaver. A scrolling banner would read, Well Hallelujah, you've finally got one in the bag. Can we print now?

2) I constantly tinker around with any thought I put down. I'm the artist that keeps rearranging the composition. What would it look like if we did this? Should this go away and then we can add this? It's a game of sketch-creation. Eventually you have to put away the charcoal and lay the paint down on the canvas. But at that point you're kind of committed. I was a psych major – I would like to avoid being committed. Or maybe it's because I'm a guy.

And, 3) I am a closet perfectionist and never think anything is actually good enough for public appearance. But that may be the fear of rejection. Any idea is fine as long as it is still on the drawing board because there are no bad ideas in brainstorming. And as far as drafts, well, it's just a draft, I can always fix it. The perfectionist in me can't always stand to read what I've written. I used to think it was like an actor who doesn't like to see their own movies. But I think it is more like hearing your own voice on a recording. You always wonder, "Do I really sound like that? Is that as strange to people as it is to me?"

My greatest angst has been the number of books that have come out lately with ideas that I have been working on. The premises aren't always exactly the same, but they are close enough for government work. This last year Deseret Book released 21 Days Closer to Christ. Erie friends will recall my 2005-2006 opus 40 Days Closer to Christ, as well as its sequel 40 Days Closer to Christ: The Names of the Lord. I've also got a book in the computer called the Christmas Thief. It's a mock Seussian pictorial book about a little imp who unsuccessfully keeps trying to suppress the celebration of Christmas throughout the past 2000 years. Carol Lynn Pearson just released her novel by that name. There are others I could list, but I'm just whining now.

Just this past weekend, I found another parallel release. And this is one that really gets me; one that hurts. It's not really even a book. It's a new movie called "One Man's Treasure." It's about missionaries in Philadelphia seeking out a hidden mob treasure. I wanted that concept. While I was in Brazil my companion and I met a family who were very excited to meet and talk to Americans, especially me. I introduced myself as from Pennsylvania and their eyes just lit up. Their grandfather had been from Philadelphia. According to them, he had worked for the mafia as an accountant. He had fled to Brazil when it was discovered that he had hidden all this dirty money that he had embezzled from them. This Brazilian family had an old letter, written in grandpa's hand, giving clues as to the whereabouts of the money in the City of Brotherly Love. The family wanted us to help them. We weren't in a position to either help or verify their claim. But I've wondered about it.

That idea has been percolating in my head and notes for years. I've written a similar scenario where two missionary companions have this same experience and then have a less than amicable parting. Ten years later at a mission reunion, the hero discovers that his former companion is missing. The last anyone knew was that he was headed to Philadelphia to "research" something. The hero suspects what that something is and reluctantly goes to find out what happened to his old friend.

If you've read my little note this far I'm impressed. I lost interest awhile ago and I wrote it. So why have I put all of this down? It is so I can ask this question: By definition writers have to write, but do they also have to publish? If all my compositions sit alone in the dark binary world of bits and bytes can I say I'm a writer? Are my three character flaws simply a disguise for fear - the fear to try, the fear of failing, or the most insidiously insane fear of all, that of actually succeeding? To Loved Ones who encourage and patiently wait for me to get my act together, I'm working on it. I've chosen who I want to be. I'm a husband, I'm a father, and I'm a writer. The first two are the most important. And as to the third, hopefully I can get a move on and add something unique to the literary world before all my ideas are used up.

* note – the great thing about writing is you can makeup words that should be words but aren't in any dictionary. English is base words, prefixes and suffixes. You should be able to swap them out anyway you want to communicate your ideas. The Ferrell Bushism of "Strategery" makes total sense to me. I get the meaning. It should be a word. By contrast, Obama uses lots of words that are in the dictionary but I don't always understand what he means by them.