It took me years to write, will you take a look?

Have you ever read The Catcher in the Rye? It's one hell of a book. 

I discovered it when I was doing a writing course, before I became a teacher. I was the youngest uni student in the class and felt a bit inadequate as I hadn't read many of the great classics that my teacher spoke about with tremendous revere. So what I did was, I'd note the books she mentioned  and then I got around to reading some of them. On that list was The Catcher in the Rye and now it's easily one of my favourite books.

I pulled out my old J.D Salinger related books after reading Catcher. As one of the most infamous writers of the 20th century, he has often been portrayed as a reclusive, bizarre person. In these two books, his daughter and ex-girlfriend mostly paint him in a negative light which is always disappointing for a reader. Although, I think you have to be a bit unorthodox to write a book like this.

Certainly you have to be a bit mad to understand let alone enjoy this book. If you're too 'normal', you might think the plot or digressions are a bit all over the place but if you've gone through any sort of madness, you'll probably empathise with Holden's frustrations. The first time I read the book, I completely missed the references to Holden's nervous breakdown and instead found the book awfully funny. Which is a bit of a worry, actually. After rereading this book many times, I still laugh out loud at the oddball phrases.

The thing is, I feel inspired to write whenever I finish reading Catcher. I've started writing a fiction text a few times in the past and now I'm eager to start one again and actually finish it. I've since forgotten my writing teacher's name but I remember her words. She said that it's really important for writers to have a goal and the goal she set for us was to write one page each day. Sounds simple enough, but actually doing it can be a challenge. She also advised us to consider ourselves to be writers even if we didn't have a published text. The act of writing and being passionate about it means you are a writer. I already consider myself a blog writer as I'm fulfilling  my little writing dream through this blog. But now that I'm also writing a fiction text, I'm starting to consider myself as a fiction writer too.

 

Lastly, my wise fiction teacher encouraged us to use our 'good' notebooks for our daily writing. Rather than saving pretty or fancy notebooks for 'one day' or 'something special,' she advised that we would treasure the act of writing even more if we used our special notebooks.

So I've done just that. I'm using my gorgeous blue notebook. I've always written diaries and the pink sparkly one and striped one are my latest. I've been writing a page or more most days and even though I have only written 48 pages so far, I hope to stick it out. In the past, work and other things have gotten in the way. Starting is the hardest part, I think, but then it's hard to stop because you never want to forget certain phrases or ideas.

For now, I just want to write a book, even if it's just for myself. I want to see if I can do it. It's going to be a long process - typing and editing it- but I hope to see it through.

Anyway, these outfit photos were in that file I told you about last week. The file of photos I took last year and forgot to share. I quite like this outfit. The monochromatic navy outfit looks nice with my autumnal coloured snakeskin boots and scarf. The only thing is, I have to really hold my stomach in when wearing these overalls. They are not so flattering around the stomach.

Outfit details:

Denim overalls ($10), Snakeskin boots (probably $5 or $10), Vintage scarf ($3), Vintage bag ($5): All secondhand market finds.

Earrings: Sportsgirl sale, probably a few dollars.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my little writing dream. I think it's important to pursue these 'little' dreams of ours, even in times of a pandemic. What are you looking forward to doing / pursuing at the moment?

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Title: Paperback Writer by The Beatles.