After all his travels and experiences around the world, and the many things he’d eaten, drank, and sampled, he realized his favorite activity was to fall asleep reading a book with a cat as his company.
Book Find
Don’t you love it when you go into a book store, especially a used book store, for a specific book, and go right to the location and find it on the shelf within seconds of beginning to look?
Sweet feeling. Today’s target was The Darwin Elevator by Jason Bough. A friend recommended it as a fast, enjoyable read.
Downer
You ever tell someone about a television show that you really enjoy, and they say, “Oh, I started watching the first, and couldn’t finish it, it was so ridiculous.”
Kind of a downer, isn’t it?
Happens with books, too.
How Cool
I’d finished my writing and was doing my post-writing walk. Going up Main Street, I passed the Starbucks. A woman was reading at a table. I glanced up, stopped, and stared.
Yes, she was reading my book.
I was pleased.
She looked at me.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was trying to see what you’re reading.”
She glanced at the cover. “I just started it last night. I’m not familiar with the author.”
It took a lot for me to reply, “Well, I feel I should warn you that I’m the author so that you don’t accidentally insult me. Now that you know, you can deliberately insult me.”
She said, “No way. Are you really?”
“Yes. You probably got the book from one of the little libraries around town.”
“No, my friend gave it to me. Maybe she got it from a little library. She finished reading it and thought I would enjoy it.”
We chatted a little longer about the book and the little libraries, and my other novels. I didn’t know her or her friend. I walked away thinking, “How cool is that?” I was so pleased and engrossed, I almost walked in front of a car.
That would have definitely not have been cool.
Recommendations
Does it sadden you when you think you know someone, and you recommend a book, movie, restaurant, or something, and then ask them about it later, and they say, “Well, it was okay?”
Yes, bums me. The converse is true, too, when someone recommends something to me because they think I’ll really like it, and I don’t .
Fill It Up
We can add, eat chocolate (and pie), drink wine (and beer), and listen to music, but let’s not be greedy.
Bookcat
Bookcat (catfinition): 1. Person who reads with the focus and devotion of a stalking feline. 2. A feline who likes to sit on books.
Dark Writing
I read, somewhere, sometime, that every book conceived comes into existence somewhere else. Our struggle, as writers, is to bring it into the conscious life that we’re leading.
That’s certainly how it feels when dark writing commencing.
Dark writing happens to me at night, in the dark. Something triggers me awake, and all the writing neurons become energetic kittens, wanting to romp and play.
And they do. They toy with strings of thought, batting and chasing ideas around like they’re balls and toy mice. Then, as they settle, the writer starts reading to me.
Again, that’s how it feels.
It feels like the writer within takes up the book I’m writing in that other existence, and reads it to me. Scenes are read. Dialogue. Reveals. Page after page is turned. I can’t put the book down.
Two hours later, the book is finally closed. The dark writing subsides. I’ve been enriched with writing material. The challenge now goes back to that ongoing struggle, to remember all these words that were read to me, and bring this book into the conscious life that I’m leading.
There is coherency to this writing process, but there’s also chaos. The reveals and scenes thrill me. But then I ask, where does this go? The question prompts the dark writer to transport me a bunch of chapters ahead. Landing there leads to more bewildered questions about all those chapters he jumped over, all the material already written and ordered, and how these reveals fit into the greater cosmos of this novel.
I wish I could more easily capture this dark writing. I suspect each writer has their own version of dark writing, the process of finding the book in their minds, hunting the details, and getting it a form where it can be read. It’s an exciting, but also frustrating, and yet, hopeful, process. I see where I’m at in the novel, and I see what can be. I just need to bridge those two visions. Easy, right?
It’ll be an interesting day of writing like crazy.
Little Free Libraries
Little Free Libraries are a wonderful idea. They started in two thousand nine, in Hudson, Wisconsin, when Todd Bol built the first one.
I’ve found seven in Ashland. I enjoy finding them. They’re all beautifully done little buildings on a post, and usually brightly colored, with a glass door on the front. In conjunction with Bol’s original vision, they resemble little school houses. Once found, they must be explored. Sometimes notes are attached.
Transitioning to another idea I like, September 18 was Hideabook day. It’s a thing Goodreads came up with to celebrate ten years of being Goodreads. Coupling my writing and publishing with marketing, Hideabook day, and Little Free Libraries, I bought seven copies of the paperback book version of “Life Lessons with Savanna,” signed them, and put them in the Little Free Libraries around town. I checked two today, and those copies were gone.
I hope people find and enjoy them all.
Michael Seidel, writer 