Wordcount

I really, really, need to write a book. Well, another one. The last book I wrote was kind of a false start. It doesn't really count unless I'm feeling a bit desperate and want to drop casual mention of "my last book" into a conversation. But no, it is time to write my first proper actual book, full of words, written by and about the wonder that is.. well.. me.

Part autobiography, part "What I think about everything"ography, I feel that the time is right to put my words into print (again) and be a proper published author.

Of course, as with many things these days, that's something that anyone can do. Just like blogs give 'the common man' the ability to write and be published (if not, necessarily, the right to be read by anyone else) so it is that the miracle of 'vanity publishing' allows any fool with enough words to print up some books and get themselves on Amazon.

And I think that's the road that I'm going to go down. It seems like the fastest way to get what I want, instead of spending years hawking a useless manuscript around publishers who won't want it. After all, I am nobody, and what I think about anything is of even less interest and significance. No, the only reason why someone would want to read my book is if they like how I write. I estimate this will guarantee me an audience of at least 1. (That would be me, then.)

I would hope that my book would be a little more than random collections of "things what I wrote" and miscellaneous recycled blog articles.. then again, some amount of that may be necessary to make my book a good size. I estimate that for your average six by niner, you're going to want something like 150 to 200 pages - I'm reckoning something like sixty to seventy-five thousand words will be required. I checked against some works of great literature. The Hound of the Baskervilles comes in at just over 59 thousand words, but perhaps Mr Conan Doyle wasn't really trying. I'd like to think that seventy-five is a good size to aim for.

Then again, "The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing" by Joseph Triemens manages just over 103,000 words (which is not bad going even for the year 1910,) and that is the same kind of discontiguous (yet handy) set of references and opinions that I'm sure anything I write will turn into. Incidentally, I'm particularly taken by "How To Care For A Piano", "Curious Facts About Hair", and "Things That Are Misnamed". This is absolutely a book that I could write.

"The New Handy Cyclopaedia of Things Worth Knowing" might therefore be an appropriate title, but it doesn't really say very much about me, and also runs the risk of marking out my fine literature as some kind of loose collection of facts and statistics, (or perhaps "rumours and careless opinions" as was said of the original Cyclopaedia) when I am actually going for more of an amazing chronicle of thought and insight and general Me-ness. Or perhaps "Me Me Me"-ness, since I always was a showoff.

The title "Diary of a Nobody" might be even more appropriate, but apparently this has also already been used by a certain Messrs. Grossmith back in 1892. It seems that I am 115 years too late on that score.

"Why should I not publish my diary? I have often seen reminiscences of people I have never even heard of, and I fail to see -- because I do not happen to be a 'Somebody' -- why my diary should not be interesting."

How true that is. And Diary of a Nobody is only 42,276 words. I'm pretty sure I can write more than that. In fact, looking back over this blog, I'm pleased to note that I've already written over 25,000 words without actually trying. It's hard to say how many of those words will be fit for print. After all, crowd-pleasing blog entries such as "I got a wrong number today, how annoying", while clearly of vital importance online, may appear nothing other than ephemeral, and perhaps even pointless, in print. It is clear that some editing may be necessary.

I think "Because Everyone Loves Balloons" would be a nice title for my book. It should, of course, have a nice picture of me on the front cover. This may be hard to arrange, because it must be said that, on occasion, I am not flattered by the camera. We'll have to worry about that nearer to the date of publication. For now, I must get writing...