The Cathedral Close

Over the last few years, I have begun a series of book manuscripts with the best of intentions. Several of these are re-writes or updates of old favorites such as Why I am an Anglo-Catholic, and others are entirely new.  With the exception of Prayer: A Field Guide which has been on the market for some years now and a just completed version of The Book of Occasional Offices, these all have languished unfinished despite my best intentions. (Or, at least some sort of intentions!)

I suppose that I could find endless reasons to keep procrastinating.  There is the usual stuff of the busy life: “I have a parish to look after.”  “I have chores to do.”  (Those who have seen the lawn at St. Swithun’s rectory will understand the absurdity of this latter one.) In my case, the excuses can be even more unusual, such as publisher of my last book disappointing me and my potential readers by having the audacity to to bankrupt the day of the announced release date.  I can only hope it was not my manuscript that pushed them over the edge!

So, I was staring at the directory containing these various gems in the rough and vowing to “get down to it.”  But, after a number of cups of coffee and several rounds of solitaire, nothing was happening on the old keyboard.  Along about the time I actually considered going to the gym to escape the writer’s block, a well-meaning friend send me an aphorism by St. Augustine of Hippo, “God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination.”   Quite convicting, that, in a real and very theological way.

So, I am looking at the catalogue and deciding which of these long delayed books to put out in serial form here on the blog.   Of course, there are dire warnings about sales of the finished product being impaired, the threat of stolen ideas and any number of reasons that would lead to further procrastination.  As Nina Amir notes in Blog Your Book, the process of writing a serial version of the manuscript forces one to get the job done.  Additional or new content can make the blogged version salable in print if that is the end game.  Here, the end game is to get some of this work finished at long last, but, if there is a royalty or two, they would be most welcome.

In any event, these works will be done under the auspices of the Bp. Charles C. Grafton Institute, a tax-exempt organization.  In the next several weeks, PayPal links will appear here and on a new Grafton site if people wish to support the work with deductible contributions.  In turn, the sums received can go to bringing out print versions of the books and to defray the expenses of the websites themselves or to support other programs such as continuing clergy education or traveling seminars for parishes.

So watch this space.  Please remember that the material is copyrighted and respect the author’s work, and we’ll see whether that copy of Blog Your Book was worth the price!