If I need motivation to write, the place I go first is to the essay entitled “Your Book of Gold” by John C. Wright.
Wright explains, in a fashion that is almost poetic, that every writer or every avid reader has one book that is especially precious to him, that affected him at the right time and in the right way, to change the course of his entire life. Wright encourages every would-be writer to publish with this idea: Even if you sell only eight copies, your book will be for someone that Book of Gold, the book that changes his life.
As an example, he names Voyage to Arcturus, the dense, highly imaginative, and awe-inspiring Gnostic parable by David Lindsay, which in Lindsay’s lifetime was a complete failure. Wright names it as one of his great inspirations, as did, previously, C. S. Lewis. Although I found it too late to be as taken with it as Wright or Lewis were, I also read the book and found it to be an astonishing work of imagination. Even though the novel was a commercial failure, it sparked the imagination of others, and in that sense was a great success. For those to whom it mattered, it became what Wright calls “the book of gold.” Continue reading “The Book of Gold”