01 02 03 Amorina Rose Writes: Readers and writing 04 05 15 16 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 31 32 33

Readers and writing

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I’ve been told the best way to succeed in blogging is to be consistent but too my surprise it is harder to do than I expected. There is so much I want to say and find out about but at the moment there is so much else I also have to do. It makes me really admire writers and feel a little like I am only playing at it, at least for the moment. So I thought I would move away from me and what I want to do and how I feel about it, and think about readers instead. It is after all the reason we write. I beg your indulgence in this as sometimes I do take a winding road to get to my point.

In a conversation with my brother the other day he said in the middle of a life crisis (and it was) he started going to the gym and it saved his life. I thought about that a lot. He does exercise and is fit in a sense as he is a ballroom dance teacher and that is hard work but this was more, he was saying more. In fact I couldn’t stop thinking about it and it lead me to this blog, the whole blog and this particular entry. I have always been a reader, eclectic with it but above all a reader. By the time I had turned ten, or eleven I had read almost every book in the Paddington Library, children’s section of course. Then I started on the adult section using my father’s card. I continued over the years, spasmodically perhaps in view of the needs life puts in front of us that demand attention but I never stopped.

As a wife, daughter and parent and having to work (even part-time) to survive reading was achievable but not a priority. Surprisingly writing often was but I kept very little almost embarrassed by my small offerings. Becoming a mature age student brought it all back. I was an English and Drama major (education degree) and it was amazingly allowed. As a teacher it was important to read what kids read so I found a new genre, well many if truth be told.

Single parents however have very little time and for me the dynamics of life underwent a huge change but I managed. I realised it was a refuge. Life was busy, life was hard and so ambitions of writing got pushed well aside but reading continued even at a slower pace. Some years passed and then I found myself in another difficult situation, one I knew I could not avoid either and I didn’t really want to. Life does what it does and you have to go with it. The Twilight Saga was the flavour at that time and as I was working part time with students I read it and because despite acclaim there was also some criticism as there always is I started thinking more about writers and readers, subjective and objective opinions, enjoyment and literal demands. All I could conclude was that I liked reading those books. They took me away from the pain of everyday life where I was drowning and no one was watching so they had to have something that connected the reader to them. That is what makes a good book. I also liked the idea of being so far away from the real world even for a short time. Let’s face it, paranormal is way out there.

So then I started reading paranormal books. On a very limited income I bought books, lots of books almost every week. I had no money but in those moments I had to myself I could read. I could be somewhere else in my head. It continued over the next seven years and then some and still does to this day. It’s better now because I discovered Kindle and Amazon and books are not as expensive. See the thing is, it saved my life and in the process I learned so much about writing, why it matters so much, why every word can be a prayer, a laugh, a momentary thrill and most of all an escape. Our readers are the reason we write and for me knowing how much being a reader helped me survive has me in awe of people that write. It frightens me that I hope to do that for someone.

It also tries my patience but then that’s something g I will tell you about in the next blog,

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