Why I Write

Besides learning to cook, I am also passing the winter by writing. Writing is a pastime that can be done in a nice warm house and dovetails nicely with my desire to fish and garden in warmer weather. The input costs into the “writing business” are negligible to nonexistent. I’ve always had an existential itch for immortality. When old age has turned my brain to jelly or my dead body lies a moldering in the grave, my thoughts will go on…and on…and on… (at least until someone hits the delete key).

I believe part of my inspiration to pen my thoughts comes from what I consider a waste in our education system. While I was in college, I wrote numerous ten to twenty page papers as requirements to pass various courses. The papers, which often required a lot of research and work, were returned with a grade and perhaps a one-line comment, only to be thrown in a trash can or tucked away in some forgotten folder. Why couldn’t the university (or for that matter why couldn’t I) have organized all the papers around some common theme or thesis, so that each paper could form one chapter in a book. In the eight semesters required to get a degree, I could have been an author and that would have been a heady experience.

A whole book can even be completed in just one semester, if a teacher challenges an entire class to coordinate their individual papers so that each student’s paper forms a single chapter. This sort of class project can be carried out even on a high school level. There would be little extra work for each student than for writing their individual papers. Peer pressure, teamwork and networking could all be turned into positive social forces to advance individual education and to teach inter-personal dynamics. To be able to say, “I wrote a book” would greatly enhance teenage self-esteem and education could (dare I say it) be fun.

Just so you don’t think this is all pie-in-the-sky soapbox preaching, let me say this process and a small class of graduate economics students produced the best seller, The Amazing Bread Machine. The book went through numerous printings and was eventually made into an educational film produced and acted by, you guessed it, the same class of students.

So folks, just let me enjoy my writing as an ego trip in self-expression and please family, don’t hit the delete key until AFTER the funeral.