I often tell myself that I should write a book, but no sooner than I pursue the idea do I get stuck on what kind of book I would write, or what the book would be about. If I wrote a fiction book within my current trend, it would be laden with metaphor, held down by some message I wished to share through the voice of my characters. If I wrote something non-fiction, it would be abstract, too disconnected from reality, yet likely uneducated in its performance and unaware of existing material of its kind.

Thus, my laziness would no doubt propel me towards fiction. Fiction is a very enabling genre. It has a readership that may or may not be looking for what is being offered, and may go through the entire story unaware of what's really being said, but core ideas live on in the form of the characters and plot. Vocabulary and etymology need not be recalled to retain the truth that is being conveyed. Then again, thinking like this makes me feel as though I'm speaking only to be heard, for the love of the sound of my own voice.

Which is the problem with a lot of my current writing. Many of these blog posts are fueled simply by the fact that I like the way they sound, and I can't really determine if they hold water until they sit in public space for a while. I don't like quite a lot of what I write, but that disdain generally comes after the fact, and I generally press the submit button with a somewhat satisfied, occasionally smug feeling of accomplishment. Over time, I've learned a lot about what I don't like and what's worth saying, even without the sparse commentary that comes by here anymore. Blogging, however, doesn't push me to finish or perfect anything. A post will almost always remain untouched once it's been up for a day. It will rarely ever be added on to, slimmed down, or altered, so as to preserve its purity (or lack thereof). The power of blogging is in its chronology, really. A post sits at a place in time, starting out new and becoming stale very rapidly. Books, on the other hand, are meant to be timeless. Which is why the thought of writing one is so appealing.

There is great irony, however, in my impatience. I can barely sit down and read more than twenty pages at a time. I read some Flannery O'Conner earlier, and I keep looking at The Brothers Karamazov with guilt, as well as a collection of Greek and Roman literature. With a dead computer, I have plenty of time to tackle all of these, but my patience is the limiting factor.