What We Leave Behind
January 8, 2018

The wallpaper on my computer is currently a picture of the tomb relief of a
nameless member of the d'Aluye family of France who died sometime in the
mid-1200s. He lays there, hands clasped in prayer over his chest, his chain-mail
gauntlets and coif turned down. Probably a crusader, the first thing my wife and
I noticed was that the sword on his hip had a Chinese hilt. According to the
Met's Cloisters gallery in New York City, he may have bought/acquired the sword
in the Holy Land. While his name is gone, I was able to take his picture in the
Cloisters seven-hundred years later. Looking at the image got me thinking,
though, about what we leave behind in the world.

As a writer, I realized the only things that might linger on in history after my
death are the words I've written. So I sat down and wrote out my bibliography as
of January 2018. Looking at it (it's posted up top with the other permanent
links), my bibliography is both bigger and smaller than I thought it would be.
Smaller, in that it's really not that long for someone who's been writing as
long as I have. Bigger, in that it covers more genres of writing than I assumed
I'd written in.

It seems to me that as writers, there are two ways to have an impact on the
world through our writing: quality and quantity. Quantity--the number of times
we're published--isn't entirely within our own power. It relies on things such
as chance and editorial preference. Quality, on the other hand, is something we
can control. Isaac Asimov wrote that authors should have integrity and always
produce the best work they can. I agree. In the end, I may not leave behind a
large body of work. But I'll do my utmost to make each and every piece in it as
well-written as I can.

(c) 2018 by Andrew Gudgel 
email: contact [at] andrewgudgel.com