I have this sudden yearning to write a book and I am not sure where this stems from. I find myself thinking of plot ideas at random times—walking home, trying to go to sleep, writing lesson plans….it’s so odd! Maybe it’s all the great books I’ve been reading lately. I am really into this one called In the Fall right now. I picked it up from the book exchange table at the Gyeongju conference only because it involved the Civil War and was a bestseller. It’s not my usual style in that the prose is not as poetic and dripping with figurative language as, say, the works of Salman Rushdie, but it’s an interesting read so far on love and family and relationships. There’s supposed to be a good deal on race, too, but I’ve either missed out on that completely or it has yet to materialize. I miss a lot in books now that I don’t have a teacher holding me by the hand and pointing out the subtleties of every passage. It’s sad, really, that even after four years of arguably some of the best liberal arts education available I am still so terribly unanalytical (according to Microsoft Word, I made up this word…just call me Shakespeare, the newest English word smith!). I tend to take things at face level and miss all the hints of a deeper underlying theme. I guess that’s one of the reasons I love figurative language so much…it’s one of the few literary devices that even I can understand and appreciate!
To be honest, I started thinking about this whole book thing earlier this summer, when I was lazin’ at home and reading a lot. I had a lot of time on my hands (even though it didn’t seem like it at the time) and much of it was spent thinking about why I like particular books and styles of writing. From there I guess it was only a natural step to want to create my own.
I suppose it all goes earlier than that, though. I have vague memories of several abandoned horse book projects. I seem to remember making it to at least Chapter 4 or so at some point, but I always eventually gave up. As I recall, they were loosely based on The Black Stallion, probably because I was obsessed with that book at the time. Horses, too. Writing about them was the closest I came to them growing up, aside from some riding lessons in my later years. I do remember waking myself up at 4 in the morning to feed my imaginary horses, running laps in the track my dad mowed for me in our yard, and starting a horse fund with my sister. I think we had about $100 by the time we finally gave up…a sizeable amount for two kids! I still love horses and am thinking I’ll finally have to follow through on getting some riding lessons when I get back stateside. Too bad my farm doesn’t have any horses!
Today when I was walking home, with these plot ideas running through my head, I concluded that along with the necessary creative and analytical skills necessary to write an excellent book (I certainly wouldn’t settle for mediocre!), I really don’t have the life experience required. Sure, there are some great young writers. I feel for what I’d want to write, though, I couldn’t really do it justice. How much can I write about life when I’ve seen so little of it? I couldn’t write a great love story, because that’s not in my experience. I couldn’t even write a tragedy, because I have been fortunate enough so far to have escaped tragedy. And I am so not into intellectual writing. So I guess I will settle these artistic urges through nonfictional ramblings for the time being. Sometimes I think I could write romance novels. They are so silly and many of them so similar. I’d like to think I could write better than Nora Roberts or Danielle Steele. I think a lot of their success comes from their ability to read their audiences well and know exactly what they are searching for in a book. When it comes down to it, I know I just don’t have it in me to write for a living. It’s too public and the potential for rejection too high. Plus, all these years of writing bullshit under academic pressure has really turned me off of writing. If I stumble across an excellent idea in my rice paddy meanders, though, there’s no telling what could happen!