Plans for Future Postings

When I get to this stage, the stage where I have time and energy to do this, usually late at night when I should be thinking about getting to bed instead, and actually sit down and write, it is always difficult to decide just what it is I want to say. Life is a demanding thing. It is no less so for me than it is for anybody else, I suppose. No less demanding, nor more demanding. There is always so much to be done that you have to be more selective in what you choose to do or you will never get to what you want to do. Or rather, you should be, perhaps, more selective than you are in what you put down. Obviously, I'm not selective enough nor consistent enough, or I wouldn't be going through this pathetic exercise of saying all of this. I would just dive into what it is I want to say.

Someday soon I want to do and post a comprehensive book review of The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall. I read it some time ago now, and I have wanted to do a book review of it ever since I started reading it, maybe even before then. It, however, is a comprehensive book, a novel of great length and nuanced narrative and composition. Now, I don't want to review it frivolously or short shrift it.

I picked up The Lonely Polygamist originally for self-serving reasons --- perhaps, truthfully, a person never picks up a book otherwise. However, I wrote a novel about polygamy long before Brady Udall did. Well, at least I think I did. I don't know all the particulars of when he began writing his book or the chronology of his finishing it and getting it, with the help of his publisher and whatnot, out there. Obviously, he had the success I didn't have in getting an agent and a publisher to work with him on it. He had had previous publishing successes. But I picked the book up because I wanted to compare my writing to his. Isn't that pathetic? That I would want to compare my writing to his?

Well, from my perspective, it isn't pathetic. I figure that, since he got published by a big publishing house and received wide critical acclaim and attention, he must be a pretty darn good writer who can stand as a decent measurement for me. So sometime I intend to start writing drafts of critical reviews of his novel. Maybe just for the fun of it I will post them here. It'll give me something to do, something to work on until I get it done, something I don't have to think about every time I start thinking about making a post.