I managed to get myself involved in a big writing project. This project has been sucking up all my free time. Some people would say that this project is a waste of my time, since hardly anyone will read it once it’s done. There are three reasons why hardly anyone will read this writing project:
(1) This writing project is a book of sermons. People don’t read sermons any more, except maybe seminarians, and of course those high school students who have to read Jonathan Edwards’s sermon about dropping spiders into a fire.
(2) Worse yet, all these sermons are about the history of Unitarians and Universalists in New Bedford. No one wants to read sermons about New Bedford Unitarians and Universalists, except a dozen or so New Bedford Unitarian Universalists.
(3) Worst of all, a potential reader will have to pay for these sermons. (Church budgets being what they are, our church can’t afford to print them in-house.) I will publish them on lulu.com and sell them at cost, but most people who read sermons are used to having churches give them away for free.
When I am feeling enthusiastic, I think maybe a dozen people might buy this book. Then I remember that these are sermons with footnotes (yes, I have gone back and footnoted everything), and then I think maybe five people will buy this book, and two of those people will be me.
So why am I doing this? Why am I spending hours and hours writing, and rewriting, and fact-checking, and footnoting, and proofreading? Because it’s fun, that’s why. Some people participate in National Novel Writing Month, and they write novels that no one will ever read. Me, I like to write non-fiction, and do footnotes and a bibliography. Everyone needs a hobby, and so what if some of us have a hobby that involves creating books that no one will ever read.
High school students read Edwards? I must have had a deprived adolescence, as I read “Sinners…” for the first time in seminary.
Right. Welcome to my little world, the planet where books are written that no one will ever read. It’s a happy place!
Include lots of photos. Hint in the title and or back cover text that the book reveals scandals… and a secret UU sect that guards the true identity of a once-high profile UU. The book should start with a murder victim found in the Louvre, naked and posed like Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, with a cryptic message written beside his body and a chalice drawn on his belly in his own blood…
Jean — It is a happy place, isn’t it? Even if there’s only enough of us here to have a small tea party.
Carol — Whoa, great ideas! And actually there are a couple of murders in the book, but referred to only tangentially — maybe I should expand those bits, and make sure to put them on the back cover.
Noooooooooooooooooo, don’t do it! Block that impulse! No sensationalism!
(That was a DaVinci Code reference, y’all. I think the author sold a lot of books.)
Jean @ 5 — OK, I’ll drop the murders. But can’t I have a sex scene somewhere? So what if it doesn’t fit into the book in any way, it would sell more copies. Hey, Danielle Steele does it….