“There are three things that amaze me—no, four things that I don't understand: how an eagle glides through the sky, how a snake slithers on a rock, how a ship navigates the ocean, how a man loves a woman." -Proverbs 30:18-19
In many ways, books are like people. Sometimes, there are books that I gradually outgrow over time. Some that I learn to love as the years go by. Then you also have the stalwart friend, the one who you've always had, the one who will always, inevitably, be there.
Oh, so books are a 'who,' now, are they? Not a what?
Good morning, Johnny! Yes, just as C. S. Lewis never called his animal characters 'it,' I never consider a Really Good Book anything less than a breathing species of its own. Not human, not animal, but a book with a mind of its own, brought to life only by an author who believes in his or her writing enough to bring this wonderful, frightening creature into being.
J. M. Barrie believed in his writing, this I know, even when he struggled to believe in himself.
Unlike Lewis Carroll (these two authors have been around together in my reading for so long, I couldn't imagine one without the other), James is much more willing to have an animated conversation at any time. He painfully shy, but then, I am too. So we get along well. The first book of his that I read was, naturally, Peter Pan. I didn't know what to expect, and I was caught completely off-guard. 1911, the year the book was published, was not the sort of time-period in which one expected to find such a novel novel (there was Baum, of course, but he stuffed hundreds of needles into a scarecrow's head. So). When, in fact, the cover looked less-promising than some (we now have a much better copy), and the author had a 'Sir,' attached to his name, I was apprehensive. But Barrie's novel, to borrow Jane Austen's line: "Bewitched me, body and soul, and I loved, I loved, I loved it."
His writing is honestly unlike anything I'd ever read before, completely honest, and completely with the imagination, energy, and mindset of the children whom he wrote the book for (and by book, of course, I mean play, because Barrie wrote the Play first, always fluctuating the ending, and he was actually a bit apprehensive to have a book published, because he liked being able to poke things around and change them. I'm very glad he did).
There is the wisdom of a child that drips from his writing: “You know that place between sleep and awake, that place where you still remember dreaming? That’s where I’ll always love you. That’s where I’ll be waiting.” Or, “Fairies have to be one thing or the other, because being so small they unfortunately have room for one feeling only at a time.” Rather matter-of-fact, and a bit sardonic, but absolutely filled with the abandoning, thoughtless, wonderful love that most people lose when they grow up, but James, obviously, never did.
It wasn't until I was wandering slightly aimlessly through the shelves in my college's library, in my favorite section (literature), in one of my favorite aisle (the A's and B's--Austen! Alcott! Brontë! Barrie!), when I discovered a magical book that was filled with many of Barrie's play scripts. That was when I realized that I wasn't just in love with Peter Pan, but all of Barrie's writing. The Admirable Crichton, What Every Woman Knows, Mary Rose, and so on, and so on. The library also equipped me with the W. W. Norton and Company's The Annotated Peter Pan (The Centennial Addition), along with The Greenwood Hat, which was what really introduced me to how like-minded and insecure Barrie and I both were about our own writing.
Sir J. M. Barrie gave me the tool to writing something that readers will actually believe in and fall in love with: write what you believe in, write what you love, and believe in what you write.
You don't have to consider yourself a perfect author (that's actually probably a really bad idea), but you must, must, must, write what you love. Write what matters to you, or it won't matter! (That sounds like a Dr. Seuss quote, doesn't it?) It helps to have faith, trust, and pixie dust, also.
I'm allergic to pixie dust.
And if you can't bring yourself to believe that anything is possible here, at least believe it within your story. Even if, should your computer ever reality-check as well as spell-check, it might try again and again to spit what you have typed back out, firmly insisting: "That's not possible! That doesn't make sense! Nobody will understand that! Try again!" You can say, just as insistently, and just as firmly: Anything is possible here, computer, because I write so.
As you may remember (depending on how much you are paying rapt attention here), I consider books, good books (and people's opinions, let's remember, on what a good book or a bad book is changes depending on the person, which is why there are so manymany different kinds of writers, and publishers, and books, and readers, and why people still write at all). Anyway. My personal beloved collection of Good Books are living, breathing creatures, which come alive in my hands. J. M. Barrie's books (and scripts), emit a joy, which I can pour into my own writing.
The more I learn about where Barrie's inspiration comes from (particularly with the Peter Pan stories), the more I realize that where we decide to find our inspiration, what we do with out spare time, what our attitudes are, and how and who we live with, not only helps create our writing styles, but defines it.
So with that in mind, live an inspiring life. Be the kind of person your ideal book-hero would be. And also, at least once and a while, bend over and look into the eyes of a child. Some of them can be real unimaginative stinkers, but most of them are far more brilliant that any of us grown-ups.
And besides, in my case, anyway, the books I write are meant for children, or adults who still think like children. Like Sir J. M. Barrie, who had a limitless amount of love for five lost boys, and, as a result, he got Peter Pan. As Barrie himself once wrote: "As for myself, I suppose I always knew that I made Peter by rubbing the five of you violently together, as savages with two sticks produce a flame. That is all he is, the spark I got from you." (I know this, of course, due to The Annotated Peter Pan) So you see? Believing in your writing, in yourself as a writer, in the people you love, and in the impossible, really pays off. As Barrie has shown us, it can cast a spell that lasts for years and years,
And years and years,
Forever and ever and ever. That seems a worthwhile task, if you ask me!