“Please browse at your leisure.”
Isley Memorial Library
Ah, libraries! To be ensconsed in one whether it be rainy or sunny outside — how positively lovely! Here I am in in Middlebury, Vermont visiting Alex for a few days. Since he’s busy, I’m entertaining myself for a bit. After some window shopping and peaks inside of the cozy boutiques lining main street, I’ve popped into the town’s public library.
I’ve found some comfy chairs and all manner of inviting touches designed to appeal to an obsessive reader like me. Newspapers are displayed and ready to hand, magazines are laid out appealingly, and books of all shapes on all subjects are artfully arrayed — just as they should be. How delightful!
And wonder of wonders! What catches my eye but the very book I had been thinking about just recently and wanting to read: How to Live by Sarah Bakewell. It’s about the glorious writer Montaigne who’s widely credited with inventing the personal essay, and wrote gracefully crafted musings on hundreds of wildly different topics over his lifetime.
I settle myself into a comfy armchair by a picture window reading an evocative and entertaining book about a writer who inspired everyone from Flaubert to Virginia Woolf. I look outside and see leaves drifting down and realize in a flash, that I am perfectly happy. I am in a cozy library reading a wonderful book in a beautiful place. What could be more enjoyable than this?
I have consumed a writing book this week, Simon Whaley’s ‘The Positively Productive Writer (ISBN: 978-1-84694-851-0) which is a personal account of how he writes and more importantly, prepares himself mentally for writing. I was pleased to find that we share numerous routines, which I’ve previously thought of as ‘mine’ and almost unnecessary for others to know about only to discover that he has similar routines. I have always kept a running note of word counts, I can tell you on any one day what I worked on, I can even tell you the date on which certain ideas have sprung and germinated – to me it is a detail of recognition supporting the significance of my work. To others it may be a neurotic system of recording, but I have enjoyed reading his book and recognising my own habits. I’d recommend any writer or poet give the book a once over, the smallest gem may be the one that helps you on your way towards success. As Simon follows me on Twitter I have been lucky enough to channel my feedback to the author, much to his delight.
Hello,
Thanks so much for your wonderful comment and for sharing your experience
with The Positive Productive Writer with me and my readers! This sounds
like a great book and I am definitely going to check it out. You are
absolutely right when you say that “the smallest gem may be the one that
helps you towards success.”
Thanks again and I hope you’ll stay with me — lots more to come!
Write on,
Karin