I like to write. I wrote a book once. I dream of doing that again someday, but if there’s anything I learned from writing that thing is it is a lot of work to put together a book. I used to write a few poems a month. I dream of doing that again someday, but if there’s one thing I learned from writing poems is I am no poet. I generally like my own poems, and I enjoy writing them, but they don’t stick with me. Next year I won’t really care what I wrote last year (the answer will be none, but even if I had…). I haven’t written a short story in years. I could look up when, since I know what the last story was. I’m sure I’ve learned something from short stories too, but I have no idea what it is. Probably that I like writing them and think it would be cool if a person could make a living being a short story writer (and by person I mean me).

I don’t write as much as I would like to. I discovered an easy way out when it comes to writing. I have a need to put word after word down on paper and have a need to show these words to someone. Lately I’ve been satisfying this need by writing stupid letters to people and companies. It doesn’t take me long to knock out a letter. I’ve written 12 in one day before (my previous letter was 11). I send these out and sometimes get replies. I’ve written roughly 400 letters so far. 60 in the last 6 weeks. On average I am doing a letter about every-other-day, but I’ve also taken off large swathes of time during this period.

Anyway, rambling way of saying I am thinking of putting together a book of my letters. One of my goals is to figure out a way to monetize my letters site. Ads make me little. Asking for donations nets me a small amount (about half what it costs me to run). So I’ve been casting about looking for a way to fund the site (and hopefully my rock and roll lifestyle as well). A book seems like a cool answer. I figure write a few letters every day for a few months and I would have a large portion of what I need written.

Problem here is that it took me two years to write 350 letters. I’m looking at wanting to be done with the writing part by February 1. That’s three months of writing (I won’t compete with the holiday mail, so mailing will have to stop for a month in there) and a month of waiting for the stragglers to come in. Add another month or so to do layouts and such and I am looking at April for this thing to be ready.

I’m not sure it’s doable. I am sure it’ll be a lot of work.