Mark's Blog

I haven't read the whole Paul Graham article yet, so I will only expound on his title. If you take it literally, you have to ask yourself if you love writing. Do you love writing about yourself? If not, are you writing about yourself in order to do something you love? Maybe you like thinking or philosophizing, or comparing metaphysics, and so writing about yourself could be a way of writing about those.

My example is that I'm indifferent to writing, but I love hiking and exploring nature. I found I couldn't live from hiking, so I figure that maybe I could live from writing a book about hiking. I can probably put up with the writing long enough to do that, especially since I'll get to do some hiking research first. Plus, I love photography and maps, and I can see how to do a lot of that for the book. Incidentally, I really wanted to start the book over the last holiday break as well, but I didn't have time with the new baby.

I forgot to add that maybe you forgot an 'f' in the last sentence.

You're right about the f, although like an elaborate lie a story must hang together.

I don't love writing about myself particularly. Part of the motivation to start blogging was to write something. At work I don't write very much per day. Someone once said to write about what you know. At least writing about myself, my family, things I've seen and heard about, I'd have something to say.

What do you mean, a book about hiking? A book about how to hike? A book about hikes you've done? A book about the history of hiking? A story about a hiker or hikers that through spending time at the border between nature and human society come to some profound understanding or conclusion? You'd surely be able to do it. Would you rather hike or write about it, though?

I meant a trail guide book, with trailhead directions, topo maps, and information about what you see. I haven't done anything spectacular enough to write a true-life adventure story. Not seeing myself as a creative person, I don't know how I would write fiction about or around hiking. Bill Bryson already did the humor thing with "A Walk in the Woods." A profound book would be nice, I guess it would have to be a sort of fictional parable to avoid being too dry, but again I am daunted.

No, it would have to be what I am most familiar with: a technical manual on the subject of trails. I could then have a small section that discusses my philosophy of hiking (connection with nature, self- or group-reliance, beauty) as a sort of introduction.

The way I see it, tourism on Kauai alone is a $1B/year industry, I can live on the crumbs of that. Plus, there is no good hiking guide book out right now.