Friday 28 November 2008

Feeling bookish

It's the weather or the season, or the fag end of a cold I can't shake off but I want to squirrel myself away with a pile of books and just... be. Last night I was watching television and someone had to stay up all night writing a piece of work they didn't want to write. I was envious. When was the last time I stayed up all night, writing? Or reading? I've ticked a lot of boxes this week. I've entered contests, finished stories, received commissions and juggled home, work and school. But I don't feel connected to myself. I'd like to sneak away to a windowseat or maybe the new coffee shop with its nooks and crannies, sit in silence and turn pages, shape a spine or two to my hand, get comfy with the words. I have a callous on the second finger of my writing hand which comes from years and years of pen-holding, scribbling. There's a place, I'm sure, in my palm that's meant to be filled with the brim of a book. I want to read everything Patricia Highsmith ever wrote. I want to read Loot: Inside the World of Stolen Art. I want to finish A.L. Kennedy's Day and start The Silver Swan. Here's to a bleak December of blanket days spent indoors with my hands and head full of pages.

4 comments:

Gay Degani said...

Nice post and I totally get it. It's been a while for me too since I spent a day with an afghan over my legs--old lady style--and a good book in my hands. So long since I fell into a book I couldn't put down.

Nik Perring said...

I'll drink to that!

Nik

Tania Hershman said...

I totally get it too - and I had a weekend just like that, read a whole book on Saturday, Mark Budman's Life at First Try. He's the editor of the Vestal Review, and it is almost a novel in flash stories, it's very funny and touching. I read Day while I was in France, I was blown away by it, one of those books I couldn't put down, and it had been a while since I'd had that. It really inspired me. Are you enjoying it?

I'd like to stay up late writing too... I still have this fantasy of writing at night, but I get too tired to do it!

Kevin Shamel said...

I feel like you.

Thanks for wording it.