1949 Skyriter

There are so many things that I love about having a literary life. I love owning books. I love holding and treasuring my cherished volumes. I love reading them—there’s nothing better than taking a dip into storytelling and beautiful language to refresh a person and lend them a new determination for life. I love words and what they mean. How they sound. How they look on a page. I love to read aloud and observe how the symbols, little black lines, and a patchwork of positive and negative space change into a musical rhythm of meaning and emotions. 

Finding the Magic

I am a bit of a romantic. I tend to move through life with the intense expectation that everything will turn out beautiful, complete, and magical. And, to me, the notion of a “literary life” is romantic. A life full of literature can be nothing except beautiful, complete, and magic.

Living a literary life is one of exploration, romance, thrill, suspense, discovery, heartbreak, and laughter. It also means that each of these things can be experienced without leaving the cozy confines of your bedroom comforter.

Wannabe

Other than simply being the name of a popular song (if you don't know Wannabe by Spice Girls then you didn't have a childhood), this word summed up my supposed literary life until my last year in high school. I was a wannabe.

Book at Me Now

I can tell you the moment my life began. I was born, but that's not quite the start that I'm referring to. I'm talking about the life that begins when you find your world. 

My mom tells me that the minute I figured out how to crawl, I was crawling towards a book. I had my favorites... and before I was three, I had a stack of them memorized. To my sisters, reading those books over and over again was torturous, but I apparently didn't care one smidgen what they thought. I hadn't figured out the whole "reading" thing quite yet, but that didn't stop me from loving books. 

You can't tell a two year old "No." Seriously, try it. You won't get far. 

I eventually learned that there were more books in the world than Dr. Seuss, and sometime after that is when it started. "It," meaning, my world. That world got put into orbit the minute I finished reading my first "real" book, Matilda. In that moment, I realized that my world had existed for quite some time, but it hadn't been able to move anywhere until I gave it a place to go. 

My literary life became painfully obvious when I was in junior high. I was that girl... the one who ate her lunch in the library because she got turned away from every table in the lunchroom. I found refuge in books... I found friends in books... I found myself in books. I launched myself into those worlds in order to escape the world that obviously didn't need me in it. 

I foraged around the lives of each and every character, seeking to find similarities between my situation and theirs. I found myself striving to emulate certain character traits: the courage of Katniss, the kindness of Cinderella, the intelligence of Hermione, the wit of Elizabeth, the imagination of Leslie, the independence of Enna, the hopefulness of Miri... I craved happy endings for these girls as much as I craved my own, and I almost saw the end of their stories as the beginning of my own. 

My mom tried using this love of reading to her advantage... she would take away my book and tell me I could have it back when I cleaned the bathroom. Instead of grounding me from hanging out with friends (the way she would punish my other siblings), she would ground me from reading. I remember her taking all my books away and locking them up, but I told her that she couldn't stop me from reading the billboards and the street signs and the magnets on the refrigerator. 

If that isn't the definition of a literary life, I don't know what is. 

I walk into Barnes and Nobles and feel like I'm home. When I plan out my dream house, the first design is always my own personal library (complete with those rolling ladders like in Beauty and the Beast). I'm friends with my favorite author on Facebook. If I could minor in Harry Potter Studies, I would. After I finished reading The Hunger Games, I crept through my basement pretending I was defending myself with a bow and arrow. When I meet someone who has read The Goose Girl, I start hopping up and down and end up making these strange squeaking noises like a really excited baby mouse. 

It would be embarrassing, if it wasn't my life. 

Under the Desk

I'm pretty confident in saying that I read more words in public school than I spoke. In elementary school I spent nearly all of my free time in the school or the public library just reading books. I checked fiction out to read at home, but I squeezed as much time as I could at the library reading nonfiction or comic books. I would stay up late into the night trying to read by the light of a nightlight, and at school I would always have a big book or two in my desk, and I was often scolded by the teacher for reading in class.

I grew up reading. Meaning that I grew up watching my parents read and finding books of my own to love. Scholastic catalogs were my favorite part of the school year, and I have fond memories of swapping recommendations with classmates and salivating over all the books I wouldn't be able to order.

This is the top half of my bookshelf in the apartment I live in now. It's not very impressive at all, but the few books on those shelves are my absolute favorites that I made room for in my luggage to fly from Wisconsin. I've reread each of them anywhere from three times to more than I can remember. I didn't bring them with me with any real intent to read them again, but I didn't want to leave them behind.

I think that feeling traces back to growing up around my dad's bookshelves. He always had dozens of grown-up-looking books in his office, but I never actually saw him reading them. But whenever I asked about one, he would tell me why he owned it and what he liked and disliked about it. A lot of these books I own today are actually from his old collection, that I made my own as I grew up.

These books sit on my shelf more as a display of my love for them than as waiting to be taken down and read, but that's because I'm always reading new books.

I used to reread over and over again, and I'm still not really sure why. Eventually I had to move away from the books I knew to go to college for the first time, and I went out and found new ones. I read so much that at one point in my Freshman year I actually skipped a couple classes - even though I was already on campus - just to pull out a book and read the next chapter.

I think I've learned a little more self control since then. Now I read on my phone whenever I have a minute or two to do nothing but wait. But still, when I visited my family last summer, I had to bring back my favorites with me.

And then I discovered writing. I found websites and forums where I could share my own opinions and reviews and participate in writing competitions. I found new favorite stories and learned to make my own. For me, having a literary life means always looking forward to another new world, always having an eye open and an ear turned to the depths of human imagination and never saying you've seen enough, and finding joy in storytelling no matter how many times you've heard the story before.

Literature has always been an unnoticed undercurrent in my life, and until recently I never thought a life focused on it was realistic. But now that I've learned more about it and experienced it for myself, I'm not afraid of that commitment. It only makes me excited.

Playing Catch Up

"Come on, Nicole."

"We are going without you!"

"I'm coming, I'm coming!"

I never wanted to be the kid that was left behind. If my sisters could do it, so could I. This was seen in practically every aspect of my life. They took AP classes, were cheerleaders, class presidents, had jobs… And although I was a year behind them, I walked almost perfectly in their footsteps.

Growing up, well into my high school years, I followed this path. One of the main aspects of my sisters' lives that I always admired was their love for literature. As with school and extracurricular activities, I didn't want to be left behind when they would stay up late on school nights and weekends reading fantastic stories and then discussing plots, themes, rhetorical devices, and sharing reactions to the twists and surprises that came with each page. In the mornings I would then wait for them to come out of their room so that I could be the next one in line to read the book. And while I enjoyed that for a while, it always felt like I was playing catch up. Running and getting so close, but always somehow falling so far behind.

During my junior year of high school everything changed. My sisters were moving on, one was headed off to college and the other was enjoying her senior year. Their interests began to change and I realized that I could no longer follow them like I was so comfortable doing. It was time that I found who I was. During this time I took AP English Language and Composition and I fell in love. I could now pick out all the rhetorical devices in a text, analyze plots and themes, and find my own books to bring to my sisters to read. Not only did I catch up, but it finally felt like the race had subsided. We were now all walking along the same path, helping each other along the way. I was no longer on the sidelines, but rather a participating member engaged in the late night conversations and daily book exchange.

Since that year, mine and my sisters’ interests have evolved. While they chose the math and science fields, I decided to take the route of English. With this my world has become one that is filled with the joys of reading and studying all aspects of the English language.

A dominant part of this world is still reading and recommending books to my sisters so that when we all get together we can have discussions like those nights that seem so long ago. I have also moved from doing this with my sisters to other family members, friends, and even random people who I just so happen to strike a conversation with. Sharing the love I have for books, authors, and even writing styles, makes me happy. And the sharing of viewpoints and knowledge is like the cherry on top.

A race is what brought me into this literary world, but it was the knowledge that I gained that kept me here.

No Pain, No Gain

                Migraines suck. This isn’t an opinion—it’s an unfortunate truth. I’ve had my fair share of these horrible headaches, and they’ve caused me a lot of pain and wasted time. But I’m not to blame for having to deal with them—it’s really J. K. Rowling’s fault.

                One afternoon, my dad strolled through the door to announce that he had purchased the recently- released Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I was an avid reader, and my interest was piqued. He told me that I couldn’t read this book until, of course, I started from the beginning of the series. Bring it on, I thought. I picked up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and started to read.

                The next day I had my first migraine. I remember lying on my bed, curled in agony, as I listened to my mom’s side of the phone conversation with the hospital.

                “It started about an hour ago. She’s just been reading… No, since yesterday… Harry Potter. She’s read the first book and part of the second. Probably about five-hundred and fifty pages… Yes. She’s ten years old.”

                For a single almost-weightless moment, it didn’t matter that I couldn’t see anything or feel my hands, and I didn’t care that my temples felt three sizes too big for my head—I was proud of myself. I had read books my entire life, but now I felt like I was really a reader. This was now a part of my personal and permanent identity.  I felt like I had been given full permission to truly love books and to dive into the fascinating worlds and complicated characters that had captivated me for hours on end. The doctor suggested that I read less, but I was a girl in love. There was no way to stop me.

                Years later, I felt a familiar tug in my heart when I read Shel Silverstein’s “Invitation”:

If you are a dreamer, come in.

If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,

A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer…

If you’re a pretender, come sit by my fire

For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.

Come in!

Come in!

I had been a pretender by the fire long before I read these words, and I felt like it was my own voice echoing off the page. I had come to love the sound of turning pages and the smell of new books pulled right off the shelf. I still reached for the moments when I forgot that I was reading and instead was experiencing the text as if these characters’ lives were mine. I even lived for the moments when I slammed the book cover, horrified, and realized that maybe “the real world” wasn’t so bad. I had learned what it was to be alive, not just to live, and what a person could do when they really put their mind and heart into it. I didn’t just want to be human—I wanted to know what it meant to be human, and I wanted to be the best kind of human that a person could be. Some of my greatest memories were preserved in paper and ink.

I knew how it felt to be a wisher and a liar in a hundred different lands by a thousand different names. I understood the price of magic and of hoping for a happy ending. I had brought my own sloppy tales to this fireside—maybe not gold, but silver or bronze, and I was content with that. I celebrated others who loved words the way I did, and I invited anyone and everyone to learn with me. I loved that this invitation—“come in”—did not imply overwhelming requirements. Come as you are, flawed and longing for more out of life, and you will find solace here in these pages. Pretending isn’t so bad when it’s presented inside a book cover and requires your greatest imagination. Perhaps in putting on a mask for a few hundred pages you will discover goodness and greatness in yourself and in your world.

This journey of self-discovery takes commitment and even sacrifice. It’s true that I have suffered pain for my passion of books, both physically and emotionally. But I have gained much more that I have given. If it is true that knowledge is power, then I owe nearly every powerful cell in my being to a book. It is as simple and as profound as that.

"Literary Life" is an Understatement

As the title suggests, those two words can never cover just how much of my life involves literature and the English language in general. Books and writing were a part of my life from the moment I could listen to my mother and understand what she was saying as she read "Good Night, Moon" to me. I clearly remember how my reading evolved from picture books to Magic Tree House, from there to Harry Potter, and now we have eighteen year-old me reading thousand page-long fantasy novels in three days.

Of course, being an introvert with a slight case of Asperger's Syndrome is probably what made fiction and language such a large part of my life. I could hardly ever bring myself to talk to people, and when I did, my lack of understanding of social norms and guidelines inevitably led to a whole slew of social faux-pas, which resulted in my parents, siblings, or (however few) friends I had to say things like "why would you say that?" or "Don't ever do something like that again." Eventually the fear of messing up while talking to people was so overpowering that I hated even knocking on someone's door because I was so scared to talk to people. Thus, I was drawn to books, where I could read perfectly written dialogue where everyone talks comfortably and there is no fear.

The book that really expanded the kinds of books I liked to read would have to be Red Scarf Girl, by Ji-Li Jiang. It is a story of the author's life in China during the infamous Cultural Revolution, and her struggle to be able to even say what she wanted to resonated with me. From there, I began to read more "classic" works of literature, and even my reader friends scoffed and stared at me, wondering why I would ever want to read Gone With the Wind or Pride and Prejudice instead of the newest Harry Potter book (which I'd already finished in less than a day). They worried that I'd start talking like Mr. Darcy or Rhett Butler or, heaven forbid, become an English teacher someday. However, there were some perks to reading such works of literature. Beyond immediately finding favor with every English teacher I happened to be a student of, my understanding of the language of "classic" books made reading them in class more enjoyable. Whereas all the other students read "To Kill A Mockingbird" in a monotone when we read it out loud in class, I was volunteered more and more by my fellow students to read it because I actually put emotion into the words and unique indicators for each character's dialogue (Atticus Finch was formal, Scout and Jem spoke in southern accents, etc.)

Around the same time, I was discovering how much I enjoyed writing my own books. It was another interest spawned by my intense fear of speaking to people who aren't my family or close friends; with writing, I could edit and tweak my words so that they were perfect, before anyone ever even read them. I started with (somewhat silly) science fiction books and am now working on three different novels, after completing a 20000 word novella that I feel is my best piece of writing to date. One of those novels happens to be my alternative to journaling, which I always felt awkward doing; the novel documents my experiences in high school, but through the eyes of my fictional counterpart Gabriel.

If I had to choose one quote or phrase that could describe the quite literary life I have just described, it would have to be from Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which he states "It is imperative you do not listen to [other people], for otherwise they will become right." It helps me remember that the best thing to do when creating something, especially writing, you have to shut out all of those critical voices, whether they are friends, family, or those quiet internal voices of doubt, in order to even begin to find a way to say what you have never been able to express.

Attempting a Literary Life

I have to confess.  I am not an english major, and I have never considered english or writing my favorite subjects in the world.  When the question was posed in class about whether or not I have a literary life, the affirmative answer “Yes!” did not immediately pop into my mind. I grew up being encouraged to read.  My mom would read hundreds of books, and she would go on about how great they were.  I never disliked reading.  Actually I really enjoyed it. But, when I was young, if I had the choice to hang out with my friends, watch or play sports, or do other activities, I would usually choose these other activities over reading a book.  

As I grew older, I started to notice the effect that reading has on the life of an individual.  I observed that my friends and family members that spent their free time reading books were significantly more intelligent in all aspects of life, than my acquaintances that spent their time doing other activities. 

Realer Friends Than My Real Friends

When I was at the age of five, my mother read to me The Chronicles of Narnia. She'd been reading books to me since before I was born, yes, but there was something slight and undefinable about this particular series that was enough to ignite in me a constant need for a story. My younger sister and I had hugely vivid imaginations, and would act out scenes from Narnia in our back yard, usually resulting in a fight over who got to be Lucy. She was a favorite, for whatever exact reason.

My mother read dozens of stories to me at that age and older, even—I remember she read to me Understood Betsy when I was around ten years old. I learned several stories this way, including Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (which sparked a rather deep love for Lewis Carrol in me), and children’s versions of plays by Shakespeare.

As I grew older, this stuck with me. I found myself daydreaming about a character’s world rather than my own. How I would prefer it, or how well I would live alongside those characters. I was going to marry Artemis Fowl. When I first had the opportunity to visit Oxford at the age of fourteen, I felt that my joy could only be completed if it was indeed Inspector Morse’s Oxford, or the Oxford belonging to The Northern Lights’ Lyra.

Maturation

School, work, responsibility—it all sucks away your soul.  As a child, I could read for days on end.  On Christmas, birthdays, any holiday you can think of, my favorite present was always the newest installment of “A Series of Unfortunate Events” or whatever series had most recently tickled my fancy.  My dad built a special bookshelf for my room to hold the hundreds of books I’d collected over the years…I had way more books than friends, to be honest! But I wasn’t upset.  Life was good, and I was happy!

However, as I grew taller, my responsibilities began to grow as well, and my time spent with the books began to shrink.

Assignment: My Literary Life

Do you have a literary life?

Those who study English literature or the humanities typically do. Such a life goes beyond literacy, but it may not mean one is a professor or professional author. Having a literary life means one makes time to read and to write in order to enjoy, explore, understand, and express. It usually means having shelves of books, and a habit of rereading some of these and talking about books frequently. It usually means writing reflectively, and at times analytically, and not always within a classroom setting. It often involves memorizing and repeating to oneself (and others) favorite passages from plays, poems, and novels.

From one of my travel journals (India, 2004)

A literary life often involves an aspiration to write and to share or publish one's writing, whether formally or informally. I don't think it means being preoccupied with grammar and usage. But it always means a love of story and of ideas well expressed. A literary life means having a serious imagination -- enough so that we invest our minds and time in worlds of words, both those that others compose, and those that compose us as we write them.

I want my students to consider what constitutes their literary life, and to write a "personal literary essay" as described here and as modeled in this blog post. This can be anywhere from 500-1000 words. Rather than listing all the aspects of one's literary life, it may be best to focus on a telling anecdote or two, as the model post does.