Dead Reckoning

It was a good question–a valid question–that I couldn’t answer.

A few days earlier, I’d sent the first chapters of my manuscript to a friend. He handed it back with comments, asked a few questions, and listened to me prattle on about agent queries and target marketing.

He was a quiet a moment. Then: “How many books does the world need? I’m not trying to discourage you,” he said, “but with all the books out there, I’m just wondering, how many more books does the world need?”

The question unsettled me. I was this close to finishing my novel. I’d invested hours, days, months in this story. Time that could have been spent with family and friends.

Who needs it?

I had no reply.

I’d spent time wandering the stacks at Borders and Barnes & Noble, and clicked around Amazon.com. At some point, I started to realize just how many books were out there.

Adding mine to the shelf would be like tossing a rock at the Continental Divide. No matter how smooth the stone or lovely the color, chances are, no one would notice another pebble, present or not.

How many more books does the world need?

I thought about the thousands of books I would never read, the millions of titles I would never hear of.

And then I recalled some of the books I had read. Books that had stuck with me. Pebbles on the mountain, that, for whatever reason, had become milestones grounded in a particular time in my life.

I remembered Runaway Ralph and Ribsy. The Rescuers and the Danny Dunn adventures. Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Snow Treasure and Charlotte’s Web. A Wrinkle in Time and The Dark is Rising. The stories of Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Poe.

Lots of Poe.

I thought of the science fiction that fed my imagination in high school.

The Bond books that always make me think of college and my buddy Craig.

I thought of newer books that have heightened meaning in my life–the stories my wife and I had read to and with our children. Click Clack Moo, Bears in the Night, tales from Dr. Seuss, and then later, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Alex Rider, and more recent still, Eragon and the Sisters Grimm, The Ranger’s Apprentice, the books of Garth Nix, and yes, Twilight.

I thought of writers I’d discovered in the last few years. Neil Gaiman and Holly Black, Craig Allen Johnson and Sy Montgomery, Randy Wayne White and Ann Patchett and Bill Bryson. Veterans all, and all new to me.

I thought of recent writing instructors, because I will always learn: Jack McDevitt, Max McCoy, Gayle Roper. Amazing writers, each gifted in a unique way, all gracious with their time, insightful with their instruction, and generous in spirit.

I thought of Lloyd Kropp, brilliant novelist, brilliant friend, and the best mentor a fledgling fiction writer could hope for. My life would be poorer had I not been pushed toward his class by another instructor and writer, Betty Richardson.

And finally, I thought of how these books and writers had called to me. Due to some strange alchemy of writer and reader and story and time-of-life, the books written by these authors were the books for me. My world became fuller for having these writers and their stories in it.

I’m finishing my book. And when I’m done, I’ll write another. And I’ll keep writing so long as the Almighty sees fit to keep a fire kindled in my head and heart and hands.

Because now I know the answer.

How many more books does the world need?

One more.

Always, one more.

And for someone, somewhere, that book the world needs, that one book–the only book that will speak to them–is the book I’m writing now.