Thoughts for the future

I want to write.

I don’t even know what I would, or could, write about. So much of my life revolves around reading text-emails, websites, blogs, magazines-that it has become difficult to imagine an original topic with which to begin. 

I can barely type anymore. This current rambling has been pockmarked with errors which I’ve had to return to correct. This doesn’t bode well.

I’ve recently begun harboring the thought of writing a book. 

I love reading.

Books can take you to another world. Watching a film or TV series immerses you in an alternate reality but it is not one of your own making. As you read the words of a book your mind inadvertently begins to assemble the four walls of an imagined environment. The textual description is but a guideline for what your imagination can conjure.

I want to write something which becomes a form of escapism for the reader. I want to have that kind of profound effect upon another’s existence. You know that feeling when you crawl into bed at night or curl up on the sofa under a blanket with a mug of tea, or glass of wine, and your favourite book? I always exhale a long and heavy sigh as if the thoughts and activities of the previous few hours can be evaporated as the breath exits my body. 

Once that has gone I’m drawn into the page; into the words and the story.

It’s not that, like a child, I believe in the fantasy of a dreamworld, but that I appreciate the vivid difference between what you see with your own eyes and what you see in your mind’s eye. As you walk the streets in a dull stupor, headphones providing a rhythmic soundtrack to your steps, the people and places surrounding you are almost a sepia blur. You don’t really pay attention. You don’t engage. You walk. Left, right, left, right- who did I need to email back? When you read a book-even if the description is of something mundane-your senses become immediately heightened. A man walking through a park is no longer a solitary and anonymous figure of your peripheral vision but an object of intense scrutiny and intrigue. You want to know what he’s feeling, how he’s dressed, why is he there? The colour of the sky is now a vital detail. The smell of the damp air a significant part of the atmosphere.

Obviously not all books have such a strong effect on you. Some you read just to pass the time on holiday so the style of writing is irrelevant. Others you read for work or factual interest and so you are not looking for a gripping and emotive story. But you surely know what I mean when a book is so great that it feels as if you are a part of it. When the hero or heroine scales the heights and depths of elation and despair and your heart and soul go along for the ride. These are the books that leave you almost with your own feeling of crippling sadness as you scan those last lines and realise that those are the final words. The story has ended. Your journey has stopped. It is a post-party come down of the worst kind because you are simultaneously hit with the stark awareness that the adventure never actually existed.

I recently finished reading Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. At this point I should not have to implore you to read it by saying anything further than that it is one of those truly great books.

This is what I want to write.