When I was reading English at university, I had a pinboard above my desk. Aside from the odd postcard, I used it to display my favourite literary quotes, poems and stories.
Fast-forward to last weekend and I was searching through some boxes for something – boxes that I haven’t peeked in for decades – and there they were… my old snippets!
Pin Board Memories!
These snippets (so I thought at the time) represented my views on… well, life! Naturally, there were the obligatory dramatic snippets that represented my teenage homage to heartbreak (mostly poems by me or others). I was surprised by the amount of political stuff I had up there, some of it still topical today…
Oooo – the passion of youth!
But what interested me most were the literary snippets I so proudly displayed. I had poetry up there by Robert Frost, John Agard and Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa; quotes from Jonson, Shakespeare and Henry David Thoreau; song lyrics and movie quotes; nerdy English jokes too, like this one:
The magic of language…
As a student, I loved anything wordy or bookish, and was awe-inspired by the great literary masters. I was also very intimidated and couldn’t imagine when, if ever, I’d be able to write as beautifully as they did. I decided not to even attempt publication until later in life. In retrospect, I have no idea whether I was right or wrong to wait. Now that I am more (ahem) mature, I can write with a confidence I didn’t have back then. But one thing that has definitely changed is my desire to write as beautifully as those I once admired… I don’t want to write like any of them anymore.
Yes, I want to create fantastically woven works of art that resonate with my readers. But it’s okay if I never win the Nobel Prize in Literature or the Man Booker International Award. It’s okay if my writing doesn’t get featured in high brow literary magazines or studied at university (oh wait, hold on – technically, it is! See here and here). What’s more important to me is connecting – with as many readers as possible.
Humans can often seem disconnected as a race. We perceive and experience danger in different places – hence the phrase ‘fighting over nothing’. Survival itself means different things to different people in different countries – there’s such notable division between styles of living. There’s no interconnected global goal for us all to attain (though perhaps should be). And so I write to span the gaps, to connect and communicate.
Underneath all our differences, we are all flesh, we love and eat, we all die – and there’s a commonality there that I value more than anything. So when I write, above language and prizes and exquisite writing, I want my readers to identify with my characters, to see a little bit of themselves in the story, and to not only connect with those characters, but with me and each other. The same is true of me as a reader. It’s relatively rare these days that I connect with a story just because it’s beautifully written, or because it so masterfully plays with language that it creates something you want to frame.
Okay, I still kinda like some of that really beautiful stuff too sometimes.
But what I absolutely love – any day or time of the week – is to connect. What about you?
Oi, younger-me! Don’t feel so intimidated!
When I was a child reading was all about escape. I mostly escaped from reality, because it sucked. It sucked great gobbets of lard.
And lard was something I ate as a child because my parents thought it was a gastronomical delight, if not plain tasty on toast.
I do not recall the first books I ever read, though. A memory for those things, I have lost; the synaptic links died decades ago or were recycled for important things. But what I do recall are the books I read in junior high school, to some degree. Harold Robbins (The Lonely Lady & The Betsy) and Hammond Inns (The Killer Mine & North Star).
Of course, reading the ‘adventure’ stories of Robbins and Inns meant becoming addicted to reading hardcore fantasy. Tolkien and Carroll and Lewis, among others, of which, once read, there is no escape.
Books were my closest friends, besides a few cats and dogs that sadly, kept dying and going to their respective heavens. I never understood why animals had to die, even when my father died when I young. I was a lonely boy, mostly, quiet and very shy – if you believe my mother’s rendition.
I am not sure, even after a few years now, of attempting to write my own ‘adventure’ stories, that I’ve connected more with people than I did in my school boy days. Writing is a lonely life; quite suitable for those who tolerate the isolation, the alone time. Or those who suffer melancholia by turns more regular than the weather.
I suppose, in a sense, I have ‘connected’ with more people than I ordinarily would have. I have to concede this. Even if the ‘connection’ occurs because we share a similar interest, or interests. But mostly a connection that comes from being linked, umbilical-like, to the internet. Even this, this universe behind a computer screen, can be a weird and wacky adventure. If one lets it.
As for memory joggers like the ‘Stuk’ or ‘Stick-its’ or Post-its or whatever people call them, I am guilty of using them too. A third of my desk is pretty in pink. Not that pink is my favourite colour; they’re just easier to see! And they don’t come in black. Phsssst.
When I saw the younger you, Zena Shapter, I wasn’t intimidated; I was struck stupid with déjà vu! The younger you reminded me of someone I once knew and didn’t remain connected to except by some dusty, unused (misused?) synapses. I get the same thing when I see a book I once read on a shelf in a bookshop, and there’s a flash of memory. Ah, that reminds me… Thanks for letting me connect with you, Zena, though it is mostly through 1s and 0s.
Since my dad was born in 1925, lard was a regular feature in our fridge too! There… another connection along with writing adventures, bookish childhoods and a love of the 1s and 0s that somehow create this magical online world!
I agree with you whole heartily. I believe that we have come to a stage in life that makes us all want to connect. Weather it be fiction or non-fiction we want to feel a new balancing of the universe. Thank you for sharing your story. As I write my blogs and books I do put truth first and that is what I feel you do as well. Keep up the good work. I love it, and it’s needed.
Wendy Richards
Thank you Wendy, it’s lovely of you to drop by and say so 🙂