Every time I tell someone that I’m writing a book I get the
same two questions: “What’s it about?” and “What made you want to write a
book?” I’ll answer the first question in
another post, but today I want to focus on the second question.
I’ve long been a lover of stories, in all the ways they can
be presented. Movies, TV shows, books, even verbally, I love them all. I remember when I was growing up my Mom would
tell stories about my siblings and I, about how we would go on fantastic adventures
and overcome great challenges. As we got
older and my Mom got busier (being a stay-at-home mom and full-time teacher is
no walk in the park), my older sister took over the story telling duties,
crafting entertaining stories that were equal parts fantasy and comedy.
I also had a vivid imagination as a youth; however, at that
point in my life I was solely concerned with my role within a story, therefore
I had no reason to present my ideas to a wider audience, as my siblings weren’t
too keen on hearing about me all day. I was a voracious reader growing up and for
many years I would create new adventures with my favorite characters and add
myself to the mix. As I got older and I was better able to understand the
concept of the setting of a book as a complete world, I become less concerned
with adding myself to the story and more involved in creating new stories for
story’s sake. I’d come to know the characters as if they were real and It never
made sense to me that the story would simply end. I mean, that’s not how life works! This is why I have always preferred reading a
series of books as opposed to a stand-alone novel. The disingenuousness of the idea that I would
only be interested in a cross-sectional perspective of a character’s life was
irritating, although as I got older I began to appreciate stand-alone stories
for what they were.
Throughout this time, as I went from high school to college,
I still continued to make up stories, some based on dreams; others based on
things I’d seen or read. But I usually
never mulled over a single story for more than a two week period before I moved
on to the next one. But then, one day, something changed. It was the middle of the night and I was
contemplating an idea for a story. As I was thinking about it, I realized that
this was not a story of the stand-alone model, a thought provoking isolated
event with a clear beginning, middle, and end. No, this was a story in the
mythic sense of the word. There was
history and context, past events playing a pivotal role in the present, and a
present that relentlessly moved towards the future. I wasn’t telling a story, I was creating a
world (I mean world in the alternate reality sense of the word, not the
physical sense).
“So, you want to write a novel?
Great! Writing a novel is a worthwhile goal. It’ll challenge you, stretch you,
and change you. Getting it published
will gain you respect from your family and friends, and it may even earn you a
bit of fame and money. But respect fame, and money aren’t the only reasons for
writing a novel. The only reason you need to give for writing a novel is that
you want to write a novel. Don’t let anyone one bully you by demanding some
better reason; there isn’t one.”
This was the very first thing I read when I opened my most
recent birthday present, “Writing Fiction for Dummies”. In many ways, this small statement sums up
two years’ worth of thoughts and observations about writing a book. I’d being lying if I said that I’d never
thought about the financial benefits of being a successful author or of doing a
reading at a public venue. But neither
of those thoughts were there at the beginning, when, as I was lying in the bed
one night, I decided to grab the most recent of a myriad of ideas that had
ventured through my head and transform it from idea into reality. I suppose I would sum up my feelings like
this: I’m not simply writing a book because I have a story to tell, I’m writing
a book, this book, because like with all stories that pique my curiosity, I want to know what happens, I
want to know how it ends.
