love, read, write

Whew! I finished American Gods by Neil Gaiman. To-day. Ahh, I’m finally released from the world of Shadow and Wednesday… Not that it was a bad book. But goodness, that book was long! Perhaps it was because I read slowly, or scarcely. I don’t know. But it’s held me chained to it for two weeks, and now I’m free. Maybe that means that subconsciously, I didn’t really enjoy it much, seeing that I’ve used the verb ‘chained’ to describe my tied-ness to the book. Who knows. My consciousness doesn’t find it that bad, though.

Anyhow. That’s that. But the main reason I’m posting, is because I’ve been thinking.

I was thinking…about adding a new feature to this blog. I know not many read it--really, it's mostly for myself. This new feature. But I thought I ought to organize these thoughts and ponderings on a nice post, partly because I haven’t posted in a while, and partly because I finished American Gods, and I felt obliged to post something about it but I didn’t think that I could fill a good, lengthy post just about American Gods at the moment (because I’m planning to save a fully American Gods-dedicated post for later).

A while ago, and I mean a while--this is going back to when I was in sixth or seventh grade--I emailed a favorite author of mine--Lois Lowry. I told her about how she was my favorite author, her books, my writing, blah blah. (Don't worry; I kept it concise--don't want to tie an author to a fan-email for too long..)
Thinking back on it, I asked myself--why don't I do that now? I mean, we all read books, we all have favorite authors, and we all get that Slam! Didn't see that coming, did you? sort of books that change our lives, whether it's a millimeter or a meter. So why not ask the author? For real?

For some reason, to me, asking or contacting the author who created the book was some sort of sacred thing that I should never do (God knows how I urged myself to contact Lois Lowry). Because a book was a book. Period. There was nothing to it. It existed in its own world, inside its own bubble, and it would stay there. I could visit that bubble and indulge myself into the soapiness of the story, but it would always and forever remain utterly separated from the cold, outside world. To somehow string reality and fiction together was some unspoken horror to me. And it’s only now that I have actually defined this feeling into words on paper. (Yeah, I know. Words on screen. But paper sounds better.)

Even now, though, I still have the remnants of that book-and-reality-stay-apart feeling. It just disappoints me, sometimes, to think that people as flawed as me are writing these flawless stories that subtly shape my life and my morals. I guess it’s just me. But perhaps others feel this secretly, as well. I don’t know. But anyways, I didn’t like to think the people in the book as mere fictional characters designed and created by the author, that they weren’t real, that they weren’t flesh and bone. That an author would be like, “Oh, yeah, Harry? Yeah, I made him. He’s in my book. Nowhere else, though.” I… I don’t know. It’s a difficult feeling to describe.

What also disappoints me sometimes is when authors write a book and they didn’t intentionally put a ‘secret meaning’ into it, yet it would instill such great concepts and philosophies in the minds of readers. Me.
When an author says, “What a reader gets out of a book isn’t exactly what the author puts into it,” it somehow chips off a little piece of my heart. I have no idea why, but I get that sad feeling all the same. I know it makes perfectly sense, and that this happens all the time. And it’s completely acceptable. But all the same, it disappoints me to think that this great meaning that I thought I learned from this great author—was just me—makes me feel so alone. And… lonely.

But yeah, that’s a reader’s point of view. One out of a hundred. A thousand. A million.

 

To get back to the point, I was talking about my new feature. So although I’ve quite often thought against it, I’ve decided to try a new ‘Thing’ on my blog.

Drumroll, please.

[Drum rolls]

Author Q&A’s!

[Trumpets blowing twice with the rhythm of ‘Ta-da!’]
[Colorful rainbow confetti explodes from nowhere]

I would ask an author every month (because I feel like if I did every week, I would run out real soon) 10 questions (or less, I don’t know). Of course, first I’d email them to get their consent or to warn them or whatever, and if they reply with a ‘Yes,’ then I’ll reply with the ten questions. Perhaps I’ll get those ten questions myself. Or maybe I’ll get them from blog-readers (which I doubt there are many). And it won’t be any old authors. It’d be authors that I really like, that I pick. Whose books I’ve read much of. Perhaps I’ll take suggestions when I run out of authors. But not now.

I’m so excited!

Because while at the same time, I have that godly feeling towards authors—that they’re not humans but essences, no matter how much I know that they’re the same sort of people who yell at their siblings and slam on the alarm clock and spill coffee—at the same time, I still feel this excited-ness of knowing that I’m actually contacting the person who created my favorite book, one on one! That I’m actually talking to them, and they’re replying to me and nobody else (per se, I mean, I guess it’s also to those who read this blog, but you know..). It’s so awesome!

 

…Lookatme. I’m getting all excited again. I do this often. I think about a plan that I’ve made, and I freak out over it, obsess over it, and get all excited. Of course the feeling dies down after a few days of having thought incessantly about it with this level of intensity I will never reach when doing homework. Sometimes I realize the unrealistic-ness of it. Sometimes I realize it’s just another plan of mine, nothing too special about it. Usually it’s the first of the two. Hah.

 

But really, I’m actually planning this. Author Q&A’s! But I want to name it something eccentric. Something different. Not boring ol’ Author Q&A’s. It sounds like some name of a boring educational TV show. Welcome to Author Q&A’s, on every Wednesday at 5. Today we will be interviewing the world renowned author of…

So yeah.

asdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjlasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfhjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklsadfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklsadfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklsadfghjklasdfghkjlasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdghjklasdfghjklasdfgh

I thought that I’d show you this nice piece of my post. It’s me staring blankly at the screen and typing out each letter in the second row of my keyboard (fourth, technically, counting the Function keys and the numbers) to a nice rhythm that I created. Ba-ra-rump-bap-ba-ra-rump-bap.

(I do this a lot, and usually I delete the jumble of meaningless letters, but I thought to myself—why not? Why not just publish it along with my post? So I did. I left it there. It' looks quite out of place, doesn’t it.)

 

Yes. And that is all. Expect another post coming up soon (about American Gods)!

 

Au revoir. Et bonne lecture. (Et l'écriture.)