I'm not really sure what I want to write. I came on Blogger to provide an update on my 30 Books in 2011 Challenge, and that is what I am going to do. But as far as the content of that update... I have no idea. I'll just write and see what comes of it.
I am still terribly behind, but I have read four books since my last update. I have read:
Christine by Laura Curtis Bullard
The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell
Looking for Alaska by John Green
Paper Towns by John Green
I wholeheartedly enjoyed all of them. Christine was a nineteenth-century novel, beautifully written, concentrated on character development and with central issues that I could rotate in my mind repeatedly without becoming tiresome. The Hand That First Held Mine was delightfully scatter-brained and filled with beautiful prose beside which mine pales in comparison. Both had me shedding tears, of joy, sorrow, love.
But John Green. John Green.
I bought Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns at Half-Price Books, in the Young Adult section. This turned me off a tiny bit, though I still bought them. They were $4.58 a piece and highly recommended. Brought them home, set them on my desk, stared at them for a few days.
Yesterday, I opened up Looking for Alaska when waiting for my grandmother at her doctor's appointment. When she came out, I felt oddly disoriented and couldn't talk for at least fifteen minutes. Went to lunch with her, babbled about insignificant things, drove her home, and continued reading pretty much all day. Paused briefly for the series finale of Smallville (won't get into that - too soon to revisit that wound), and continued reading into the night. Finished, and continued pondering in that half-sleep state that makes you question whether you're actually alive.
Today, opened up Paper Towns while waiting for my mother at a hair appointment. Once again, provoked into silence. Then, on the way home, couldn't stop talking. My passion for words and writing and authors and becoming something more spilled out on my poor, unsuspecting mother. All she could do was nod and smile. Continued reading all night, and just now finished the second John Green novel in two days.
This is where I return to my opening line... "I'm really not sure what I want to write." Not in reaction to those novels. Not in this blog. Not in my writing of fiction. Not in my journal. And that's just it... I don't know what to write. Here, John Green has flawlessly (and seemingly effortlessly) created two masterpieces that go against most everything I believed to go into the formula for "good writing." The prose isn't poetic or lyrical or elevated. It's a Young Adult book for crying out loud. The characters are high school kids, trying to figure out their lives amid prom and parties and overprotective parents and finding their place in the social hierarchy. The plot isn't this big, larger-than-life story of poverty or war or love surpassing everything. But they are some of the most brilliant novels I've ever read.
How do I do that? How do I write words that are more than words? How do I turn the every day into something magical?
I sound so dramatic, don't I? But the fact is, I was deeply moved by those books. Reassured that my path is, in fact, headed deeper into the world of fiction. So deep, that I may not be able to fully extricate myself from the written world. I will live with one foot in the imagined and one foot in the real. That is how I will navigate through Alaska's labyrinth of suffering. That is how I, like Q, will keep my strings together, tied to others, yet wound tightly around my own heart.
... I wasn't expecting that to come out. Funny, how even my own ideas of who I am are shattered each time I sit down to write.
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