There are people capable of thinking in dynasties, or Great Works, but I’m sure I’m not one of them. Knowing myself from the inside as I do, I have a hard time imagining that anyone ever actually SET OUT to build a pyramid. Or that China’s Great Wall came about after a single act of decision by some one person.
But maybe it comes with practice. You start out with small projects, say a tabletop pyramid, or a Small Wall across the back of your lot. Once you learn you can complete those, you go on to larger and larger ones. Until eventually you can say “Okay, I’m ready to start a Great Wall,” and feel confident that you can cross all of China eventually. Or you start with tiny model rockets, go on to bigger and bigger ones, until eventually you graduate and say “Okay, now let’s put some human footprints on the moon.”
Anyway, I have this very shy notion in my head … an idea that doesn’t actually want to come out and be noticed … because then things will be expected of it. There could be demands it might not be able to deliver. Because it’s a dynasty idea, a walk on the moon idea. And maybe I’m not up to it.
I have the notion that I might write about a certain person I knew. Somebody so special that to get you to know him, to make you understand how great he was, would take a whole book.
It shouldn’t be all that hard. I mean, if that “start small and work your way up” thing really works. Because I write little things every day, and I’ve even written two full books. That makes it even worse in a way, though, because I know from experience that each book ceases to be an extremely intimidating project only after you’ve done it.
I think the thing that scares me most about setting out on the adventure of writing a book is pretty close to what Bilbo said to Frodo about traveling: “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
Most of the time I write something, I sit down with the whole of the thing already in my head. It’s like a big friendly dog standing quietly in the dark, all perfect muscle and bone, gleaming eyes and warm, shiny fur, fully formed and complete in every detail, waiting for the pat of a hand or the toss of a Frisbee, and all I have to do is provide the light of written words to illuminate it to lovable tail-wagging completion.
But a book … a book is just too dangerous. You might naively imagine it as that same friendly dog standing wagging in the darkness, waiting for the touch of your words to illuminate it, but then start writing and discover it’s more of a mountain lion, something with a ferocious mind of its own.
Books are scary. Feral.
And sometimes, the more you write, the more light you shed on it, the scarier it gets. Because then you can see the teeth, the claws. You can feel the hunger of the thing, the demand for you to HURRY, to do it RIGHT. Or to suffer the consequences.
So when I think about writing a whole book about this great person I knew, something inside me trembles a little.
But then again, even the Great Wall was put together a brick at a time. Maybe if I write a scene at a time, a chapter at a time, and post them here, I could eventually have a whole book’s worth of scenes and chapters.
Other bloggers, with less skill than I at writing and less justification in the greatness of their subjects, have done that.
But still, I worry. Can I get a good start on it? Can I complete it? Can I do my subject justice?
More than anything, that last bit is the toughest part of it. I want to do justice to the person I’d write about.
Because the person was a dog, the best I ever even met.
And his name was Tito.