A thread with some serious thoughts about writing. Each time that I have written a book, some readers had ideas about what they thought should have been covered. They are almost always right that it would be great for a book to cover those things...

and they are even right that it could be expected in order to fully answer obvious questions that readers might have about the main topic of the book. They would be on a list of what I might expect someone else to cover if they wrote a book about the same topic.

BUT I didn't think that I had something new or distinctive or even instructive to say about those things. I wrote about what I had something to say about and didn't try to pass off my saying the obvious things that anyone else could say as part of the substance of my book.

I think that is okay. I think it's okay to contribute what you have to contribute and admit that there are important related questions that you don't have anything new to say about, rather than trying to force it.

One of my New Year's resolutions is to try to do better to recognize this in others' work, and to appreciate what I can learn from them even when they do not have something new to say about related issues that I find pressing.