I'm toying with writing a book, will report some long time later.

I've been asked to write a book by many of my friends to write about all my travels (200 countries, 90 unique ones). I keep telling them I'm retired, and no longer wish to work.
I think writing about all the people I have met during my life would be a dramatically more interesting subject, because they represent people of many countries and cultures including the US. Many are average joe's like myself, but also many people of accomplishment such as a rocket scientist, professors at several prestigious universities, doctors in several countries, and even some family members. One is a critical care doctor, a member of doctors without borders, who travels to third world countries to train doctors. And so many interesting people I have met during my travels. But it seems like a very demanding job that I'm afraid to tackle. Like edgarblythe, I'd be rewriting so much of it, it'll become too frustrating, and I'm not a patient person.
However, I encourage you, and wait to hear of your progress.

I have enough to do, besides writing a book, but the idea amuses me (so far).

There is a point where the culmination of so much work can result in a feeling of exaltation. The frustration falls away as your creation reaches its final form.

I spent untold years with my husband and scripts. I still think he's wonderful at it, despite our being a bunch of years divorced. He is the first person I'd heard of, of any color, who dealt with black south LA. He was raised there. Of course, that tome went nowhere. On the other hand, his writing has been part of why I loved him, and still do, at least re his brain and heart.

I don't mind his new wife, if that is a matter of curiosity.

I have no egoist illusion about my new work, but I love it and will hawk it as long as it takes. My last piece was an awkward work of a length most publishers will not consider. This one is pure fiction, offering readers a fast paced story.

Oh. And I wish you would give it a try. You could surprise yourself.

Osso, If you're feeling inspired, then do it. If you're not, then don't.

Be warned. It is challenging and occasionally maddening. But, in the long run, satisfying.

Mine may be salacious as was real in my observations..

well, hey, I'm just starting thinking about it, salacious not being the theme.

Jespah has done it, to the max.

For creds I have one thing, and for non creds, I've others

I was once very involved in the matter of piazzas. I researched something like 5o of them, but that was icing, for the proposed book. I had real stuff on some of those places, including being to many of them, and I was intererested in experience most of all.
First view of the Campo, and so on.

Sigh. I had a well regarded small architectural publisher, but that was when we divorced... and life fell apart.

There still is no good book on the nature of piazzas and the life of cities. I did lectures a few times, but than isn't my mode.

Besides, all my photos are way out of date.


Grits teeth.

Jespah is a good example.

Sometimes writing a book begins with a series of rambling essays on any thought or concept that captures you on any particular day. You see, feel, or discover in some way -- something -- that takes your breath, holds you, excites you, something that is somehow out of the ordinary and makes you think more deeply than usual. So you write it out, as if explaining to your child or grandchild as exactly as possible, losing as little nuance as possible. You'd be surprised how quickly and deeply your powers of description can become if you approach it in this simple manner...!

Re-reading the next day or so brings about refinement of description, adds details you may have left out, raises thoughts on related subjects, and often opens the door to more such writings.

After several or dozens of such seemingly-unrelated essays, a pattern emerges that you can feel (more than see plainly).

Your collection of essays then take on a precedence in the order of their reading or telling. If you were introduced to a total stranger and you wanted to relate all of this great information, you have to start somewhere, at some basic point, at a foundation of the work. And so you begin to organize what soon becomes at least a pamphlet, then a short book of some sort.

You might build a short fiction around a few of these essays, to tell a story that has basis in an actual event you witnessed, or a feeling you had concerning some event. You might write each one as if you are a travel guide and you are introducing a friend to some place or site you have visited. You might write out your feelings and conclusions concerning the passing of a member of your family, or a beloved old pet.

You might supplement with photos or artwork (best if it's your own). I wrote a very short intro to all our cats (we have about 30 rescued cats, all healthy and happy, most are now 10-15 years old, 2 are 19, our oldest passed in sleep at 23). I started with simply naming them all for the school kids I teach daily at the local Japanese middle school. From there, after review, I decided to add each cat's story -- how they came to live with us, what their personalities are like, any interesting anecdotes. It grew from a one-page intro for school kids to nearly 15 pages of brief cat-bios and personality descriptions. I haven't even begun to add photos yet.

Then I have 2 dogs to write about (one is 5, the other is 18 and plays like a puppy). I will relate how the oldest dog faced certain death twice but bounced back, that my wife cooks home-made food for the dogs, and how their health improved shortly after.

In the end, your book may not be something you necessarily want to publish and leave to the world, but something you want passed down for generations to come in your family. Not a diary, but the essence of who you are, how you perceive the life you are living now, and sharing the lessons you learned that no one else can quite learn in exactly the same manner.

Writing such a book allows you to touch future generations of your family that you will never see but allows them to see you -- and indeed constitutes a sort of immortality...

That sounds as a very interesting project.
Also I think writing even if it never gets to be a book is a good idea. One disappears into a world away from the daily life we live.
My husband wrote some books. It was work and more work and research and more research. They were not novels.
I have never wanted to write a book, but I have collected everything I could about my family way back, information, letters, pictures and wrote information
about them. It ended up being three big folders. Later other familymembers wanted copies of them.
I have done something similar about our summercabin.

It's an intoxicating idea, Kerouac snorting a load of coke and in one delirious weekend coming up with On The Road, but the reality is a hard slog. There are times when you don't want to write, feel nobody will be interested in what you're writing and have no idea what to write next.

It is a good feeling though, knowing you can justifiably call yourself a novelist, even though you don't.

Aw, thanks.

I keep an idea jar - this is from Ray Bradbury's book on writing. I get an idea, I write it down, it goes in the jar. Usually that idea isn't picked up again, by the way, but it's nice to know they're there. If I was in demand and writing on a daily basis like he was, I would raid the jar. Instead, it's a place to park my thoughts so they don't interfere with what ends up being the real idea.

The real ideas have been -

• alien Kristallnacht (that's Untrustworthy, which is published)
  
• a tripartite near-future society of humans, somewhat sentient robots and aliens, with murders as the backdrop (that's The Obolonk Murders; it's a trilogy with each book about each group. Not published yet)
  
• first contact with an alien life form similar to Australopithecus afarensis with the backdrop being ugly political unrest at home, takes place about 400 years from now (that's The Enigman Cave)

Current real idea, to be written this November which will kick off what I hope will be a series: Gangs of New York meets Men in Black; e. g. aliens live among us in nineteenth century Boston. It will be called The Real Hub of the Universe.

I am also published in some anthologies and those are also what I call 'real ideas' although they're smaller. I don't make any money from these; they are all for various charities:

• lesbian lovers, one human, one not, get stuck after a night of passion (that's Complications, it's in an LGBT-themed anthology called Discovery)
  
• Props is about a woman who thinks she's been abducted by aliens but it turns out she has Alzheimer's; it's in an anthology where the proceeds go to Alzheimer's research, called The Longest Night Watch
  
• Cynthia is about a man with Alzheimer's, told from the perspective of Cynthia, his black Great Dane. That's for Longest Night Watch 2, coming out this September
  
• The Last Patient is about a teenager and her therapist, who is dying of lung cancer. That's in Stardust, Always, where the proceeds go to St. Jude's cancer research.
  
• The Jungle is about an attack on an abortion clinic; it's for Black Heart Magazine and is for gun control. Proceeds will go to Everytown for Gun Safety.
  
• No trip to Jupiter is about a woman whose disabled sister is mentally ill. This was written for a mental health awareness anthology; charity not yet determined.
  
• Getting Over It is about a teenager obsessed with a man who doesn't know she's alive and is for the same mental health awareness anthology.

It helps to write about a million or so words to get the crap out of your system. I ain't kiddin'. Best way I've found to do that has been to write fan fiction as it can't be published anyway. So I have tried out a number of themes over the years. Some of these were adaptable to these bigger ideas.

In any event, some people are plotters, where they plan much of their stories. Others are pantsers, who kinda fly by the seat of their pants. Both methods are great if they work for you. I find I am something of a hybrid as I will get the gist of it planned and will do the research in advance, but when the time comes to write it all down, I improvise, and sometimes that plan falls apart or it gets moved around.

Eek! I have written a novel here - but these have been my experiences. Hope they help - all of this has been going on for maybe 10 years from when I first started to write fan fiction until now. I first started writing seriously for publication in 2013.

I usually have the central character, a beginning and an end, in mind, but virtually no notion of how to connect it all. A few times I have come up with characters who refuse to follow the plot and have had to replace them with more compliant personalities.

Thirty cats - there's a title right there..

I have enough to do, besides writing and reading .

Sometime, I have something in my head, I want to write it immediately, it need more inspiration. At other time, I forget it, boring, it's so difficult to complete if you must care so many thing, I have to work all day