If you have been following my blogs you will know that reading and writing take up a fair chunk of my life. My passion for the written word started early, as I was read to as a pre-schooler, and once I could read, I couldn’t stop. I became a keen visitor to the Upper Hutt public library taking home many books at a time. As a teen I was fortunate to read some excellent writers of short fiction. Two that resonate with me today are Janet Frame, one of our (New Zealand’s) most respected authors, and Britain’s Doris Lessing. I have read so many other authors since I have lost count. It is not these lauded authors I wish to speak about however, but what makes a story stand out for me, and why I can remember it, months or even years later.
Standing out from the crowd
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Writing hands by Karen [CC-BY 2.0]
‘Forget any story, and just draw,’ I was told. A character could be animal, not sure about
Books, books, books. My home is filled with them and so is my head, especially when it comes to writing about my dad. He was surrounded by books; not because he was a scholar, but because he had ingenuity in bucketloads when it came to earning his family’s keep. It was post war; his army service done. So what does a man do for a living, with no job, little education, with a wife and four children to look after? Why, he sets up a lending library service of course. He started small, with a stationary library in Gloucester Street, Silverstream (north of Wellington). And being the entrepreneur he was, the idea of a travelling library soon followed.
December. On finishing, I passed it onto another friend and regretted doing so, as I had liked the book Charlotte very much indeed.
I just happened to see an advertisement in a literary magazine I subscribe to, Narrative, where one of the editors was calling for applications to his forth-coming writing workshops in New York and San Francisco. ‘How exciting’ I thought, and then squashed that frivolity with the prosaic ‘don’t be stupid’.
ARTISTRY 