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

34
8th July 2015

Hello again,

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,

Ciao for now

Barb  
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