How To Find What You Came Here For

Welcome to the worlds that populate my brain!
The short stories you find here are the product
of a vastly overactive imagination
powered by coffee and M&Ms.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Felonious Intentions



Rene Descartes famously said, “I think, therefore I am.”

I would like to add a corollary to this: “I read, therefore I write.”

When I read, I am pulled into whatever world the author has created.  Every story, even if I’ve read it a hundred times before, becomes an out of body experience for me. Even mediocre stories can take me out of reality for a while in a way that the most immersive movie experience can’t.




My mind is trudging along next to Sergeant Vimes, feeling the cobblestones of the streets of Ankh Morpork under my thin-soled shoes, when I read Terry Pratchett’s Guards! Guards!




My heart tumbles right with Eve and Roarke’s when I read J.D. Robb’s Naked In Death.




I’m reading over Candy Foster-Smith’s shoulder as she writes in her journal about post-apocalyptic America every time I open the cover of David R. Palmer’s Emergence.





My pulse pounds with fear and excitement during that final battle for Gondor as I devour J.R.R. Tolkein’s Return of the King—a book I’ve read at least once a year since I was ten years old.





And that’s why I write.

It’s not because I have a million and one stories bopping around in my head like kids jacked up on Mountain Dew and Pixie Stix…although that is a factor!

I’d like to be published.
I’d like to be one of the few authors
who “make it” and become seriously rich.
I’d like to make it a career.

But I don’t need those things.

No.
I write because I need to recreate
that feeling of experiencing a different reality
vicariously through the characters on the page.


My goal when I write is to draw others,

          willingly or no,
into the world I’ve created.


I’m a wannabe literary kidnapper.






This post is my response to a prompt from Write On Edge to write about our writing goals.  Sure I want to be published.  Sure I want to have my writing on the New York Times Bestseller List (although the shine is off that one a bit ever since I saw Twilight up there, I have to admit).  But mostly?  Mostly I'm looking to abscond with your mind, your heart, and your soul. 

7 comments:

  1. Love the
    "I’m a wannabe literary kidnapper" line. Absolutely perfect!

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  2. You should be glad that you write because you want to create, and not because you want to be published...perhaps then it will seem less like a job and more like a blessing. Good luck to you.

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  3. I love that. Wannabe literary kidnapper :) i think at the core that's what all authors and writers are

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  4. What a beautiful way to put it! I think that desire to write is greater than the desire to publish for most writers. It's like breathing.

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  5. "I write because I need to recreate
    that feeling of experiencing a different reality
    vicariously through the characters on the page."

    Oh, yeah!

    And "literary kidnapper?" Awesome!

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  6. This is the second great slogan I've read today! Love it!

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  7. Literary kidnapper - what a great description. I love your goals here.

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