Book ideas are the moments when the voices in your head become so loud it shakes free apple flavored thoughts onto the continuation of a living tree, which can be a sheet of paper, a computer screen, crumpled napkin or a receipt from a strip mall store that guarantees ten percent off the next time you visit.
Like an innocent calf branded during the early days of spring a writer forever holds where they were at the birth of their next adventure. Learning to trust its presence inside an already crowded hallway is an art form assumed bold, strong and covered in a perfectly ripened scent and yet its reaction to the first pages written resemble an extremely shy child introduced at a elementary school assembly.
I’ve met many authors; the closet type inspires me most. An idea bursts onto their daily habits, one maybe two weeks are spent racing to feed an itch that demands, “Don’t stop until you’ve got a beginning, middle and end.” Then without warning, the visual caught between the lids of your eyes disappears faster than the day it arrived; so the book, short story, romantic piece of poetry or heart felt lyrics to a song about the times are set aside to dry in a sun that never sets.
Book ideas are the moments when the voices in your head leave the rest of the wordy word landscape up to you. Like dreams we fall from before its conclusion, the attempt is to jump far and wide hoping a single print from your fingertip might locate the key to unlock the gate just like the other day when nothing else mattered but the desire to paint words onto the continuation of a living tree.
Writers are individuals with four thousand faces. When it gets too tiresome to hold up each persons Visa to be in your country the first expression is to huff and puff, grow angry, take a spill, pill or swallow an entire glass maybe ten of things made of grapes and other berries. I once did that; killed off one of the main characters…then stood for minutes that felt like hours staring at myself in the mirror exclaiming, “A good writer would erase what this drunk moment created. A brilliant writer would accept it and take the story a different direction.”
Book ideas are moments where everything around you becomes an object studied, listened to, touched, smelled then boiled in a giant kettle that reshapes your everyday into a puzzle piece that makes your story better. Mark Twain didn’t like the idea that his readers wanted an autobiography, “Don’t they understand that every book I’ve written is my life!”
An author writes to me this past Sunday, “Please get me published.”
To which I replied, “If I do all the work what will be used to teach the lessons you’ll one day share with a passerby seeking the same?”
Book ideas are no different than being a martial artist in search of the great Black belt and beyond…some schools hand those strips out cloth out like Halloween candy while others require years of training that show you the way. Determination only gets you to the front door. Walking the way everyday introduces you to universal connections meant to take place.
I am not a great writer. I’m perfectly happy knowing not everyone understands what falls from these hands. I carry with me a poet’s accent. How you place, arrange, cut loose, build up, reshape and curve words is what’s missing from today’s bookstores. What makes you original is the confidence of being truthful to the pair of shoes you’ve grown into.
Not all book ideas are meant to shoot from the soil and grow brightly lit petals much tastier than a rose; if that were the case there’d be less lawyers and doctors waiting to take your money. Halloween 78 required the writer in me to wait thirty three years to put it on display.
Take incredible notes when the voices become too loud, for there'll come a day when the best thing you can share with those invited to the circles you helped create will hold the little things that suddenly become music on days when missing you is much much too heavy to bare. Those tiny sketches, word dumps and plump new beginnings shall feed the imagination of the next generation inspiring them to put down the video games and find tremendous pleasure in giving the imagination permission to dance.
You don't need to sell a million books to be called an author; the only thing required is the tip of a pen or pencil, even the essence of your most simple touch lightly kissing the edge of a sheet of paper I call the continuation of a living tree.
I will always believe in you first…
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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