Sometimes Life and writing simply do not work well together. My lack of writing recently has not been for lack of subject matter, however. Far from it, in fact. There has been so much going through my head lately that it’s hard for me to sift through just what exactly needs to be written about. One thing that has been prominent on my mind, however, is the idea of the book that I wish to write about this entire ordeal with cancer. I keep thinking that the book should be more about life perspective than how I’m dealing with the cancer itself. This is probably the way to go.

I’ve certainly written more than enough words to be a prolific published author, but I’ve rarely been able to fully commit to a book project. I end up with missing pages. I don’t know how to fill in the gaps. It’s why I prefer essays to drawn-out publications. More than a couple of times I planned to give up on writing a “proper” book and focusing only on essays, which for a time has ironically led to the publishing of a couple loosely organized essay collections. But the allure of publishing a book, self-published or otherwise, is apparently too great for me to ignore. But, of course, how to fill those missing pages to make it something that would be coherent enough to not just be little more than a collection of essays, most or all of which would probably be available online regardless.

There are always missing pages, whether or not you realize it at the time. Of course, you can always publish future editions. But I believe this is why I love online publishing so much. You can always change things, not worry about having to republish and spend money on redistribution. Obviously, e-books solve a lot of the problem, and because I’ll probably never be happy with the product, my future published works may just be freely available PDFs. One day I may decide to produce a “definitive” version that I publish properly through some means, and later regret the whole thing.

These days, I don’t know what I should be writing, how it should be written, or if there is even a purpose to rambling on for hours. I keep telling myself to just write things down and deal with it later, just like I used to. But I, like many writers, often get out of that habit. I need to make sure I just keep making my notes to limit missing pages in the future. So much has been happening lately; but I don’t necessarily believe I’ve given the events of the past couple of years enough time to settle in my memory to the point where proper reflection can be had.

So there will be missing pages. It’s just going to always be true. A writer’s work is never finished. There’s always one more question to answer, one more thing to detail, and one more thing that eludes the tongue that just must be said.