"I keep my eyes always on the LORD. With HIM at my right hand, I will not be shaken." -Psalm 16:8
Although it might not be true, I don’t think I’m a very apt conversationalist. One trick that most people like myself-
Good luck finding one of those.
-might have come to know at this point in time, is a trick known as a conversation starter.
Here’s mine: “What are you reading?”
Unfortunately, and shockingly (though less shockingly, as time goes on), the response is often in the negative.
So, there are some people who just don’t read. Fine, then. Just remember that one cannot be a glorious writer unless one is a glorious reader! As Stefan King once said: “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”
Too true, that!
As a writer, however, it is imperative that I read, with as wide a variety as I can, and with as much fluctuation, color, flavor, style, setting, genre, and age (books have ages), that can be found.
So I can ask, “what are you reading?” to anyone I happen upon, and they can give an answer without too much trouble (“I haven’t had time to read,” or, “Oh, this excellent series by J. R. R. Tolkien about-a-middle-earth-with-some-hobbits-elves-giants-and-an-exc-e-llent-wizard-named-Gandalf.” Although, I haven’t really run into someone (aside from my EWIP), who has actually been in the process of reading the LOTR books. Have you?).
Ask me what I’m reading, however-
Run for it, chaps!
And you have just placed me in a very awkward situation. Let me put it this way: our home has books the way our neighbor used to have those amateur radio magazines, or some people collect stray cats (seemingly by accident), to their back porch: Storages of them. Piles. Burrows. Whole back porch-fulls.
Some of the best books (the lucky ones), find themselves in my room (see the full list of those books right here), where they make themselves comfortable for temporary residence, or even permanent dwelling. It just depends.
A few books are so incredibly precious (no gollum pun intended), that when anybody else wants to borrow a book to read (rightfully so), it makes me a bit antsy after a while, the absence of a
beloved, while a hole in one of my shelves taps its foot impatiently, waiting to be filled again.
I can be a bit finicky, being sure that nobody is bending the pages, or leaving it laying open on its face (dreadfully back for spine alignment and a generally prolonged lifetime, you see), which, of course, is ridiculous, because books cannot and will not tolerate being ignored for longer than they deserve. Besides, books are just stuff! Read them, smell them, and enjoy them! Share them! Do not store up your books like a greedy dragon in its darkened dwelling-There shall be no tsundoku in this home! No sir, not on my watch!
Who’s the dragon, now? What was the point of all this?
Thank you, Johnny. The point of it is, some of my best book-y book friends (AKA friends who are books. If you don’t understand, don’t ask; you will someday, in your own time), are more than just books, they are family. Practically anything that I’ve read from author Gail Carson Levine is a part of that book family, which is how she made her way on the Wall of Writers, squashed in her place on top of J. R. R. Tolkien (whom we have already discussed), and underneath Noel Stratified (whom we have not yet).
For obvious reasons, most people know Gail Carson Levine for the Newbery book, Ella Enchanted. My relationship with Mrs. Levine, however, began with a different title. I remember waaay back when I was smaller than I am now, reading Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Wand, right through a
car trip (even though I can’t read in the car). Then, I wandered from the car through the metal gate that held our backyard together (our own private Wonderland), and I fell into a swing, still reading, reading, reading (even though I can’t read on a swing; that’s how engrossed I was).
That was basically how it was with all of the Neverland stories that Mrs. Levine wrote.
I was dropped into a bubble. A fairy bubble.
There was just something so delicious and terrible and wonderful and sad about her writing; it made me, a young reader, feel something. And it was remarkable to be moved inside by paper and ink and the English language. What power we writers have.
I still read those books, obviously. When you get too old for fairy books, you’re too old. That’s how you can know your age, not with a calendar, or the wrinkles on your face.
I don’t have any wrinkles on my face. Or a calendar.
Then, much later, a copy of Ella Enchanted was unearthed in a cardboard box at a garage sale, one hot Summer day (the sort of hot when you shut blinds and sweat while your doing nothing but sitting there). My twin sister got to read that one first, but I read over her shoulder on the way home (you see? Her writing keeps making me read in the car! That’s going to be a new way of measuring a book’s worth, by seeing if it’s worth getting carsick over), because, I tell you, there was an aura of good-reading coming out of that book. I could sense it, acutely, and I, at long last, was right.
Gail Carson Levine actually has her very own excellent writing blog: (https://www.gailcarsonlevine.com/), which I would highly recommend poking around in. She has excellent, practical writing advice. And her husband has excellent photography.
I suppose there's something fierce and beautiful about much of what Mrs. Levine has written. It reminds me of something that writer Jack London once said, which I think I shall use as my closing inspiration for you:
"You can't WAIT for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."
