“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” ― Philip Pullman

As I begin to pick up momentum with my new book it occurs to me that one of my biggest tasks is figuring what to filter out. There is so much material, but no point in writing about things that do not A) move the narrative along, or B) hold enough interest to sustain the reader’s attention.

Of course, good writing is supposed to elevate even the most mundane. That is what made Thoreau’s Walden such a literary classic; it isn’t the story that keeps the reader engaged so much as the author’s masterful prose.

Then I can’t stop thinking about the insight penned by Blaise Pascal (in the mid 1600s): “I have made this letter longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter” (Lettres Provinciales).

Curious, I went back and did some rough calculations:

• Since we moved to North Carolina (2013) I have published around 4,500 blog posts featuring some 2.2 million words.
• Tolstoy’s epic “War & Peace” has 587,287 words.
• The Bible, depending on the translation, includes between 750,000 and 800,000 words.
• My eight published books have, on average, around 45,000 words each.
• This current project – trying to tell my story in memoir form – includes around 130,000 words to date.

The initial rough draft should be complete sometime in the fall; then I intend to have the manuscript ready to publish in the spring. When this project is wrapped up I plan – unless a traditional publisher expresses interest – to make the book available via Amazon’s on-demand platform.

When we arrived in Tarboro November 27, 2023, Rebekah had a one-year contract and I said I would write a new book while we were here. I may not have finished quite yet, but we haven’t moved either.

Maybe some of you will actually read it? Or at least pretend to! Regardless, I should have something to show for all this work before too long!

And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh. – Ecclesiastes 12:12

– DEREK