Want to write or have to write?

By the time one reaches a certain age, he or she is likely to have met more than a few people who have said, "I'd like to write a book. I think I have a book in me," and, of course the right response is, "I am sure you do, and I look forward to reading it."

We all have a book in us. All of us. We have all lived lives that have experienced births and deaths, loves gained and lost, illnesses survived, bad breakups endured, and so on. We have also been inspired by films, other books, etc., and feel we have a story to tell. But here's the thing.

I wrote my first book in 1995. It was called Route of the Eagles and it was about passenger trains on the Missouri Pacific Railroad, a topic that would seem to have limited appeal (though it did sell pretty well). If this makes sense, I wrote the book because I was greatly interested in the subject (railroad buffs can be like that), but I could not buy it, because no one else had written it. In other words, I wanted it, but I couldn't have it unless I wrote it myself, so I had to write it. Since then I've written 20 or so other similar books, but none of them means as much to me as that first one.

What I am try to say is that it seems reasonable to me that the best books are the ones the author had to write, because the story, whatever it was, was just too powerful, compelling and personal, to be left. Aren’t those the stories that touch us most?