A Thirst for Words

I haven't been doing much reading for a few months. I can't say I have any real reason, save the usual: other things to do, other crises to handle, no real time to sit down without being bugged by someone or something (or someone and something.) So it came as a relative surprise when, earlier this week, I found myself with some downtime and a book in my hand... and devoured it, cover to cover, in a matter of hours.

The book in question was The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, by Patricia McKillip, a story of love, war, betrayal, and magical beasties with an elder-day flair. Not a recent purchase, I picked it up some years ago and forgot about it until recently. I'd only intended to skim it, maybe read a chapter or two, but before I knew it I'd plowed past the halfway mark and was well on my way to the back cover. It wasn't that I particularly loved the story. In fact, on a scale of one to ten, I'd only rank it about a five or six. It also had little to do with McKillip's writing style. It was simply that I didn't realize until then just how thirsty I'd been for words. I even started dreaming of words again, something I haven't done for a while.

I've been drawing. I've been writing. But I forgot, in the meantime, just how much I needed the occasional dose of reading, of experiencing the joy of letting someone else tell me their story instead of fishing around in my brain to come up with my own. It's the difference between seeing art and making it, or watching travel shows and actually going somewhere. One may think that the doing of it is all that's necessary for fulfillment, but that's not always the case. Sometimes it's just as necessary to take a look outside your own efforts and your own self, to give yourself a break from pushing and creating and struggling and simply escape. It helps keep the fires burning, rather than burning themselves out. (It also helps one see where one's own creative efforts need to go, or should stay away from; in this book's case, it served as a warning against the overuse of flowery language, profound metaphors, and overwrought seriousness in my own writing.)

I'm still doing some writing and sketching, and I'm still poking at my other creative outlets... but I'll try to remember, from now on, to keep a book or two close at hand in case I get thirsty again.