Yesterday, I wrote about my decision to stop writing books. It was, as I wrote, a very complex and difficult decision, book writing has been my identity and passion for so much of my life.

I got a lot of lovely responses, only one person wrote to say  good riddance, and given the tone of the modern Internet, that’s pretty sweet.

A good friend wrote me a lovely note saying “Hi, Jon, what a wonderful post about giving up writing. Sad and uplifting all at the same time!” I wrote her back right away, saying “I’m giving up books, not writing.” She is a literary snob, this is a long-running joke between  us.

Some other people wrote to say I was brave.

Someone from Pennsylvania wrote to say she would miss my writing, and I explained to her that she doesn’t need to miss my writing, it’s right here every single day, and more than once, God help us all.

I got a beautiful message from another friend, and she captured the spirit of my new writing life quite perfectly.

“The library is still my church,” wrote Kathleen. The thing of your blog is…it is a daily presence. I take your book,  your living book, to read every morning. I listen to you and study the photographs of a fond place and people and animals, etc…really, Bedlam Farm Blog is a unique art form, a living book, it could be a book.”

Thanks, Kathleen, a wonderful note. The blog, as it happens, is a book, it is my continuous book. It is the story of a life, my life, and like any good book, I hope you will sometimes see your own life in it.

It is just like any other memoir, except it is evolving in full view and every day. Poor Robert Caro has been working on his next LBJ biography volume for 17 years. Nobody will have to wait for my next book, it is here on the blog every single day, more than once,  typos and all. Nobody needs miss me, I am not dead yet.

I am still reeling from the collapse of my publishing world, I won’t run from that, I’m not that tough. When your world disappears, especially one we love,  as has happened to so many people in our country in recent years,  there are only a few ways to respond.

You can be bitter, sad and full of lament and regret, or you can set out to build a new world. I don’t intend to sour like some old soup.

People often tell me I should be submitting some of my posts to the New York Times, and I always laugh a bit (inwardly). I don’t tell them that I have many more readers online than the New York Times, perhaps they should be submitting their pieces to me.

My blog is a great gift to me on many fronts. It provides me some needed income,  perhaps now more than ever, it helps to stave off the wolves with voluntary payments. It allows me to write in the style and frequency and subject matter that I desire.

I am proud that even with my Dyslexia, I am able to write frequently and confidently, some typos notwithstanding. Like I said, you will get the good Katz and the bad Katz, but you will always get the real one.

I will say with as much humility as I can muster than when I started the blog in 2007, I understood that I was pioneering a new kind of writing, a new kind of book. It would be more spontaneous, personal, informal and impulsive than book publishing permits.

The blog is about a life, not a topic or a subject. I swore I would be authentic, selling things would not be the point. I promised to share my life. Really, those are all of the basic tenets of memoir, they are not new or radical.

If I published the blog in the form of a paper book, everyone would get it. As it happens, it  has taken a long time for people to understand the book in its new form, as Kathleen did in her beautiful note.

I am not, of course, giving up writing.

I am writing more, and I think, better, than ever. This new form of book writing plays to all of my strengths, few of my weaknesses. I have a lot of ideas, and I don’t need to sit on them for years or wait for the marketing department to tell me what is wrong with them, or why nobody will pay for them. That is soul-killing. I want my soul to live and be f ree.

I am not really even giving up books, as Kathleen also realizes. I am giving up corporate publishing, which is a beast all of its own. Good riddance to it.

I loved publishing when individual people ran the publishing companies and were committed to supporting writers and  treating us with respect and dignity. Like so many other things in America, publishing houses are all corporate now, owned by foreign companies nobody has ever  heard of, run by people I will never know or meet and who will never know me.

They don’t care about me, and I don’t care about them. So I am liberated, I am free. I know better than to waste too much time on the old days, the wheel turns and turns, that’s life, and you either get on it, or get off and drown in misery and regret.

I am committed to my writing more than ever before. And I will never speak poorly of my life, I know it is listening.

Kathleen got to the heart of my writing idea. The blog – a clunky name – is a daily presence, it is nothing more or less than a life. My photographs have added a wonderful dimension to my telling of this story.

Kathleen’s letter was addressed to “Jon and Maria,” even though she had little to do with my books. I am aware of how much the presence of Maria has brought to my blog, as well as my writing life. She has brought so very much to my creativity, as has our life together.

A life with Maria is, by definition, a good and meaningful life. So my gentle presence, my church, my living book is not at an end, it is just beginning.

Like some of you, I can hardly wait to see what comes next. In a few days or weeks, I will shed my identity as a book author and New York Times bestseller (no one else remembers it anyway) and get on with the business of life: loving Maria, the farm, my blog, the dogs and donkeys and sheep and cats and chickens, the podcasts, my photos,  the refugee and Mansion work, the drama of friendship.

I think I won’t call my agent to break the news.

In a year or so, he’ll check his client list and call me up or e-mail me to make sure I am alive and if I have any ideas for a new book.

I’ll tell him no, I have no more book ideas, and yes, I am very much alive, perhaps more so than ever.

I’ll get back to you, I’ll tell him. You’re the best.