Telescope Reviews: Sky Vistas by Craig Crossen

Thanks for the encouragement, Bill. But the fact of the matter is that even from the first (1982-1983, and the article on the Milky Way that appeared in "Astronomy" magazine) I expected publishing would turn out to be a rose-garden--a garden with more thorns than roses.

I enjoy writing, and I write for a lot of reasons: I write to consolidate and extend my understanding of some subject (such as the structure of the Milky Way; or the history of Babylonian temple architecture). I write to capture and preserve my own experiences. I write to preserve aspects of more general history (such as that of the rural Midwestern culture in which I grew up--a culture that no longer exists). But publishing is well down the list of my motivations for writing, and there are a lot of manuscripts lying around the place here that I don't try to get published because the process of publishing is such a bother and there are so many other things I would rather spend my time on.

And from a purely practical point of view, I make a lot more money editing than I do publishing. But I like editing. It's a very creative thing to take another person's haltingly-expressed thought (English is not the first language of most of my clients) and put it into English prose that rings with clarity. And I like interacting this way with first-rate minds (and some second-rate minds--but every job has its drawbacks). And I learn a great deal from my clients' articles, dissertations, and books. One doctoral dissertation I edited was by a European journalist who had a great deal of insider information about the International Atomic Energy Agency's search for Saddam's Bomb during the 1990s--some information of which was so confidential that it had to be cut from the final draft of the dissertation!

I believe it was the English mystery writer Dorothy Sayers who said, "I hate the writing, but love the having written." I think she was in the wrong line of work. The whole process begins with an interest in some subject for its own sake. This is true even of creative writing: Mark Twain's "Tom Sawyer" and Jame Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist" are the result of their authors' nostalgia for their youths. To write to be A WRITER is simply to set yourself up for disappointment. If you write because you want to write about something specific, then you are immune to the shady publishers and book-sellers. T. E. Lawrence said that, "The only books worth reading are those which had to be written." His "Seven Pillars" is a prime example of that. Another example--one which we all know and read--is "Burnham's Celestial Handbook." Unfortunately Robert Burnham Jr couldn't keep in mind the fact that it is the journey itself (that is, the writing on a subject), not the arrival into print, that is the most enjoyable thing about the whole process for an author.

Craig Crossen