Well, I have been remiss. And thanks to all those wonderful people out there who’ve reminded me that nothing fresh has appeared here for a while. I’d like to (and will) protest that my recent lack of blogging steam has been the result of a fascinating book project. This is, I’ll add, resulting in a fascinating book—a best-seller, no doubt. But you’ll have to take my word for that.
Of course, I could have plonked myself down in front of the screen after a hard day’s words and managed something to fill this space, but I’ve been knackered and all I’ve wanted to do is settle down with a book for an hour’s unwinding before sleep.
Reading is my process of defragging. Like a magic carpet,
it takes my mind away from the deep (and sometimes dark) trials and tribulations of my characters, giving the springs and cogs of creativity time to huff, puff, and wheeze into a peaceful standstill. The alternative is to try and sleep on a bed of a thousand thoughts, but when I’ve done that, I’ve found that those errant mindwaves aren’t necessarily confined to my head, but tend to ping noisily around the room, disturbing my wife’s precious drift into dreamland.
So, what does a ghostwriter read? Just about everything under the sun, in my experience. There are certainly books I wouldn’t want to ’fess up to having read, and plenty I just can’t get into. But there’s an aspect of reading that I do want to share, and that’s the discovery that a particular author one’s stumbled across, and enjoyed immensely, has a host of previously published works. It’s like finding a veritable gold mine.
A recent blog mentioned Jasper Fforde and his whacky novel, Shades of Grey. I was discussing this book with an extremely bright, young someone a couple of weeks ago when she told me that Mr Fforde had written a plethora of crazy and absurd books. She described them as silly books for intelligent people. I’d prefer to omit that she looked at me sideways at this point, no doubt gauging whether I was intelligent, but my honesty prevails.
The books she recommended were the Thursday Next series, a wonderful romp through literature as we’ll never know it. The wonderful thing about reading Ms Next’s adventures is that it doesn’t really matter how much in-depth knowledge of literature (good and bad) the reader has in order to enjoy them. There’s something for everyone.
Those who’ve read the books will know exactly what I mean when I say that you sink into the pages line by line—the write stuff for an overworked brain looking for something to hang a grapple to. Give them a go—get lost in a good book.
Oh, and try really hard to read them in order, starting with The Eyre Affair.