An Unfortunate Epiphany

I cannot ever write a book.

The End.

Oh my goodness, in so many ways those two sentences are making me laugh in my head. I was penning this blog post in my head on the way home from Bible study after said epiphany, and there are so many directions I could go from here. Needless to say, the directions I will take are the exact reason I can never write a book.

Phrases like...on a side note...let me backtrack...did I tell you (fill in the blank) because it might be important...just so you know (fill in the blank), but that's not really important to the story...

My epiphany really combines two stories from the last month, thus making it an epiphany, because neither thing in and of itself would cause me to come to the conclusion that I could never write a book.

Story numero uno. Last night I was talking to Danell (which was apparently a dangerous thing to do because boy, could I tell some stories from that conversation. But I won't. Because it's not the point of this blog post. Sheesh, my epiphany just keeps smacking me in the face!). We were creating a fictional ending to an event coming up in my life. The fictional ending is not so important and will stay between the two of us, but Danell suggested that part of the ending wasn't good because would I really want someone else to get the credit for the ending? I told her I would just leave that out of the story when I told it to my future children. No big deal. Danell laughed at me. She did, out loud even. She stated that I could never leave such a critical piece of information out of a story. She stated, in fact, that I would not only include that information but I would also include some sort of statement about needing to give the background for the critical statement. I laughed out loud and admitted that she was 100% correct in calling me out on this. End story numero uno.

Story number two. I've had several "conversations" through blog comments and Facebook recently about series of books and the apparent love/hate relationship many of us have with series. I love the character development and the continued ability to live in someone else's life that comes from a good series, but I don't like the needless detail or ways that author's appear to drag a story out in order to get one more book into their series. End story number two.

And now for the epiphany. I could never write a book because I would be the author who included way too much detail that would cause a book to drag on forever and ever. So, don't look for me on any best seller list in the near or distant future. I won't be there. :)