Fiction Predictions
In the
interest of maintaining the momentum which my sister has achieved with this
blog, she has asked me to provide a guest post. Therefore, I have endeavoured to dig my writing cap out of mothballs
and have a go at putting pen to paper again. It was at this point that I
realised that I had neither pen nor
paper (which is irrelevant,
really, as I have a laptop) but, more importantly, I hadn’t the faintest idea
what to write about. You see, not only was my writing cap getting dusty, but my
reading cap was as well. With few exceptions, I have not picked up a book with
the intent to read it in some months now, and as this is a reading/writing blog,
this seems to me to be a bit of a detriment.
However, let it not be
said that I’m not willing to take suggestions and so, thanks to the help of a
friend, I have a list. You see, the thing I have noticed about this and other
reading/writing blogs is that the focus tends to be on the past - that is, books
that are already written. Therefore, what follows is a list of books that
should exist and hopefully someday will (if they do not already). It’s only
three books long but then, nobody said it has to be long to be a
list.
#1. Captain Hook’s
Story
The worlds of parallel
and revisionist fiction have seen some successful ventures of late, from the
smash hit Wicked to Terry Pratchett’s Dodger, which raises the question of why
hasn’t anyone done anything with Captain Hook yet? The charismatic corsair
extraordinaire plays the perfect foil to Peter Pan, a colourful villain for a
children’s tale… and yet, he is decidedly one-dimensional, though I suppose most
villains in children’s stories are. There is certainly room to expand upon J.M.
Barrie’s character and, dare I say it, even room to cast Peter Pan in a darker
light, drawing upon his similarities (and, some argue, his predecessor) the
Green Man, a creature akin to Fairies, from back when fairies were believed to
steal children.
Certainly would put the
Lost Boys in a different light, wouldn’t it?
#2. Dummies for
Dummies
As I do not know the
geographical makeup of the people who will be reading this, there is a book
series available on this side of the pond called “__________ For Dummies”. I
hope that was self-explanatory, and also that my research indicating that these
books are not available outside of the United States was factual. Otherwise,
this entire paragraph was pointless and somewhat embarrassing to claim as my
own.
Anyway, rather than a
guide to some subject with which you are having difficulty, what I propose
instead is a story about a fictional family – one that is shallow, vapid, inept,
grotesquely overconfident concerning their own value, and sadly rich enough to
make it seem that they actually are important. In a sense, it would be a book
that illuminates what is best about our culture by condensing all of what’s
worst about it into one, easy to read book. Essentially, a modern Great
Gatsby…
…Or an episode of that
program with the Kardashian’s, only you can assign it for English
class.
Further, there aren’t
any commercials.
#3. Your Book
Having gone with the
light-hearted and somewhat cynical options already, I decided to finish this off
with something sincere.
It would only be a
slight exaggeration to say that everyone I know who is an avid reader also
aspires to write something. I myself have several novels that I pick up every
now and then, work on feverishly, and then put them away for a few months.
Someday, I might get one or two of them published, maybe not. Maybe yours will
get printed instead.
But then, the ultimate
goal of writing isn’t – or, I should say, shouldn’t be – to get it published.
Granted, that would be an excellent outcome, but if artists only painted
pictures they knew they would sell, Van Gogh would’ve only finished one
painting. The goal of writing is to tell a story so that we can share that
story with others… and the only stories that get told are the ones that get
written. So I encourage you to work on writing your story. It could be
anything – it could be about a peach growing up on a farm. Actually, don’t
write about that, I borrowed that example from Elf, and a cease and desist
letter from Will Ferrell’s attorneys would be a bit of a bother…
…but if you do finish
something, I jolly well want to read it.
Unless it’s some sort of
romance novel, then you can send it to my sister.
This is her blog, after
all.
