Somewhere in the middle of my eighth, or maybe it was my ninth, message for the Feast of Tabernacles this year in Khun Yuam (the total includes a short welcome message, two offertory messages, three Bible studies, and five sermons of varying length), I looked at the ever-growing pile of paper beside me and realized that I had enough material for a book of the messages that I have given while here in Thailand. I do not have a title for the book yet (and I welcome suggestions), but I have enough material for one, and that is reason enough for a book.

Given the religious tradition I come from, I would not feel comfortable profiting from this book. After all, that which is freely received from God and freely given to the students at Legacy or the brethren of the refugee camps (or, possibly in the future, even the brethren of the Church of God in Burma, if those travel plans work out), would be freely given to others as well. I figure a lightly copyedited e-book in .pdf format would be appropriate, perhaps (if I am feeling particularly ambitious) to be edited and expanded as I give future messages. As it stands right now, I have between 40 and 50 pages alone from the Feast of Tabernacles, in single-spaced 12-point Times New Roman font. When one adds to that the more than a dozen messages I have already given, there is already enough material for a book, and I am barely done with a semester of Legacy so far. So, the book looks fairly promising from that perspective.

Whenever one goes about accidentally writing a book, one has to answer a few questions about approach. How does one want to organize the book, for example. The last time I accidentally wrote a book was when I found that I had enough pages in my essays as a graduate student in military history at Norwich to write a book (which I copyedited, put in chronological order, and added an introduction [1]). I called the book, rather ironically, Time Well Wasted. I have a taste for giving ironic titles for my books, which makes the titling of a book of mostly straightforward sermon messages a difficult task for me. Titles like: Sermons From The Wilderness Years keep popping into my head, titles that give a fair idea as to the contents of the work but also hint at my ironic sensibilities. It is something I will have to muse on.

Perhaps the thought of accidentally writing books strikes others as unusual, but as a very prolific writer (as readers of my blog will well understand), there are a lot of half-written or even complete books among my large body of essays. In my life I have written books of poetry, books of plays, books of short stories, and books of essays, honing my craft so that I can write large amounts at a time if I am inspired and have stewed and marinated about a subject long enough (one reason I am fairly prolific at writing about the Bible—it’s something I spend a lot of time writing and thinking about). Nonetheless, while accidentally writing a book may be something that some of my friends could well understand, I am aware that it is an unusual habit.

Nonetheless, as I take a break from writing my eleventh and final message for the Feast of Tabernacles this year (I found out I was giving two additional messages above and beyond the nine I had already planned for), I find it puzzling that I have such an endless mass of written works and that I really need to find someone who is better at the marketing and promoting side of writing. I can write pretty easily, but I have a much harder time with the sales aspect of writing (or any other kind of activity for that matter). My ideal, of course, is to outsource such duties where I lack the inclination or the ability to those who have the connections and the competence to make a success out of them. Finding such a person (or people) has been a difficult so far. Hopefully I don’t write too many more accidental books before that problem is solved for good.

[1] http://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2011/01/28/time-well-wasted-an-introduction/