I’m always reading one or more books about writing and/or editing. For my next offering, I was planning to weave a theme around paragraphs from three authors. However, I’m going back and forth in Philip Gerard’s remarkable Writing a Book that Makes a Difference (Cincinnati: Story Press, 2000). I say remarkable partly because it grows more vivid with repeated readings. The other two authors I’d planned to quote were John Gardner and Frederick Buechner. If I leave them aside for now, you know the kind of company we’re in. Many writers testify that the major impetus that launches us into a writing project that’s meaningful to us and keeps us at it till we’re done is passion. On that note, what is the book that you must write, or else your life will not be complete? Gerard’s first chapter is entitled “What’s the Big Idea?” It begins:

“Every writer has a book he needs to write — the one that has been keeping him up nights, invading his dreams, teasing him with scraps of scene, dialogue, fact, invention, idea, image, memory. The book that in some way speaks profoundly to the core of his beliefs, the emotional and spiritual and intellectual center of his life. The book that will take the best that is in him and every bit of craft he can muster” (p. 2).

Here are the subheads in that chapter: A Calling, Courage, and Faith Risks and Benefits Defining Basic Terms [find it for these six pages, and revel in the rest] Creating Aesthetic Distance Practical Techniques Didacticism and Sentimentality Theme Fits Subject The Writer’s Authority He brings the chapter to such a rousing conclusion that I want to share two whole pages; if we worked on the same floor, I’d be reading it aloud. As it is, I’ll confine myself to the two exercise prompts that end the chapter, hoping to whet your appetite for more of the book:

1. In fifty words or less, answer the following question: What is the most important thing that ever happened to you, and why? Don’t assume it is the obvious memory; it may turn out to be a small, quiet moment buried deep in your childhood: a word from a teacher, a scene you witnessed from a train window, a Christmas present you yearned for but didn’t find under the tree. Don’t be glib. Peel off the layers of the experience to the fourth or fifth sublayer below its obvious meaning. 2. If you had the power to instantaneously change one thing in the world that didn’t affect you personally (forget adding millions to your bank account), what would it be? Why would you change it? What’s the most eloquent argument against changing it? What makes you believe the change would be for the better? What would be the effect on a specific community of strangers? What would be some possible unintended consequences? The answers should give you some clue about your preoccupations as a writer — the things you care about most deeply. This awareness is the first step toward writing the book you need to write (p. 29).

I hope you are working steadily on a project that means life or death to you, on behalf of a few others or of countless millions (it matters not). Writing that flows from that kind of commitment will surrender to your wrestling with it, first to get it out there on the page and then to pull it into shape. This book is an inspiration, and if you could use a little of that, I recommend it. Write on!