Escaping in to a story
You will often find my nose buried in a book. First thing in the morning while eating breakfast a story’s words help stop the frantic list making that my own words are trying to put together. While travelling it fills in the time until we get there. In the bath it helps my mind drift and relax.
We moved to Greece when I was 12 years old. I can remember the day the big van came and took all our boxes of books away to our new home. I re-read them many times until we found a little newsagent that sold English language magazines and books and we bought a new book there every now and then, though they were very pricey. My mum and dad found many good ‘grown up’ books in a second-hand shop of which they passed on a few to me that they knew I would enjoy though the shop didn’t really have any teenage books. There was a library in the middle of the town’s central park, I borrowed one Greek book and sat complaining throughout the whole of the first chapter as they used the same dull words over and over to describe the scene.
To fill in the gaps between re reading a story I would write my own and filled up many notebooks.
When I first came back to Scotland I found myself lost looking at the many different books that I could easily get my hands on. I went through a phase of being embarrassed borrowing or buying books that were for a younger age even though there would be a couple of adult books in the pile.
Now looking back I see that I was silly to be embarrassed for a few reasons. I recently found out that most of the books I classed as teen books are actually in the young adult category. I am only 23 years old and still count as a young adult, don’t I? In the time that I was over in Greece I missed a lot of new stories and have some catching up to do. Finally I am writing a novel for young adults and one piece of advice given by authors on many occasions is to read anything and everything and experience life from as many different angles as possible.
myrustyhalos 
Read everything you can get your hands on! It’s an oft-used cliche about reading sauce bottles and cereal packets – but I used to do that. I was a precocious reader; which is, I think, how I developed my vocabulary at such a young age. BUT for learning how to put a story together – how to build the scaffold and then hang things from it, children’s books are the best way to learn.
Keep going…
Oh I still do that, i’ll be washing my hair in the shower reading the labels lol I’ve not heard anyone else say they do that though. I think you are right about learning how to put a story together through reading children’s books. Every reader begins with children’s books and that is likely to influence an authors work later on in life.
I am really sorry if you got a couple of emails about this post, I put it in the bin by accident and had to publish it again doh!
nope, no emails – see I didn’t even have to know you’d binned me!!!!
Lol I didn’t bin you! I binned the post 🙂 Oh well i’m glad as I had images of you getting all these emails and thinking i’d lost the plot lol
I used to love reading, I always say I haven’t got time but I think maybe now that I should make time… now there’s a New Years resolution in the making!
Have you ever tried an audio book? I have had so little energy with this pregnancy that even holding a book up some nights is too much. My uncle mentioned that he listens to audio books so I downloaded one and gave it a go. At first it was very weird though after a while I got used to the lady’s voice and enjoyed it. It also means that during the day you can do a little multitasking, enjoying a book without walking in to things.