I’m getting back to the NaBloPoMo prompts, and today’s one really intrigues me:
Do you have a book in you? Fact or fiction? Related to your blog or totally different?
I’ve always loved books. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love books. Obviously, such a time must have existed. I can’t imagine being too enamoured of them before I knew what the were, or hadn’t yet learned to read. But, truthfully, I can’t remember much of my tiny years, and I definitely can’t remember those really early years when I couldn’t read.
You may remember I talked about my love for libraries here earlier in the month.
So much of my life has been spent with my head in a book – though you wouldn’t know it from my Goodreads ‘score’ this year, where I’m 14 books behind where I should be if I’m to achieve my personal goal of reading 30 books in 2014. (I know. It’s bad. I have no excuse, but am scuttling hastily to my reading chair whenever I have a spare five minutes these days, not only to catch up, but because I’ve rediscovered how much I love reading, and how much I miss it when I’m not doing it.)
And books have influenced the way I’ve lived my life, developed as a person, informed my habits and my values. They’ve taught me, entertained me, expanded my thinking and inspired me to action.
Therefore, given the impact books have had on me, it seems only logical to ask the question: ‘Do I have a book in me?’
Oh, how I hope so!
For years I’ve nurtured the hope that I could write a book, maybe even two, and I’ve dreamed dreams of ‘being a writer’, making a living from my books, entertaining, educating, and putting something back into the literary stacks from which I’ve received so much pleasure.
Of course, dreaming about it doesn’t make it happen. We all know that. I know that. Even so, it doesn’t get me any nearer the typewriter. Looking up from this screen, I can see a pile of a dozen books specifically written to help the keen amateur to conjure up this elusive creation called a ‘book’. There are magazines littered around my home, with bookmarks and sticky notes and torn out articles from previous magazines – all in various states of being read. And don’t get me started on the backlog of online magazines that are stacked in my ‘To Read’ folder on my laptop!
Yet how many words have I written so far? None.
Actually, that’s not strictly true.
I’ve got plans and outlines and ideas all in stages of development in various files on various devices. And some of them even make their way into their own exclusive folder before I lose interest!
Why is that?
I think at last I have a clue. Reading an interview yesterday with crime writer, Mark Billingham, he said something that really made me think:
‘Write the book you want to read.’
So simple. Yet so profound. And so different to the way I’ve been approaching this whole idea/planning/writing maelstrom.
Which brings me back, at last, to the questions posed at the head of this post:
Do you have a book in you? Fact or fiction? Related to your blog or totally different?
Do I have a book in me? Oh yes – and more than one, I hope! Time will tell if I actually develop the discipline and the perseverance – not to mention the skill – necessary to get it out of my head and onto the page.
Fact or fiction? Fiction, always, would be my choice. I’ve always preferred my facts in fictional form, actually – historical fiction, science fiction – fiction where I can learn something new is always a great treat, I find.
Related to my blog or totally different? Hmm. That’s a tough one. My blog is what it is because it’s something very dear to my heart. It seems to me that filling our spirit by finding out what we love and immersing ourselves in more of it is fundamental to a happy, fulfilled way of living. And it’s that concept that rolls about in my head most often, so anything I write tends to come from that starting point.
Having said that, however, my fundamental desire for my writing is to entertain more than educate, so humour and fantasy and a vision of a potential new reality feels both compelling and needed, especially today, in this world filled with so much turmoil and heartbreak.
It’s certainly the kind of book I want to read.
And now I’m interested to know: what’s the book you want to read? And are you writing it?
