It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming of themselves like grass.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I had this story that had been banging around in my head and I thought, 'I'll just see if there's anything there.' So I wrote a few chapters of the book that became 'Year of Wonders,' and lucky for me it found its readers.
Then I found books that were written much later, as late as 15 years ago. It was very superficial material, but enough to tell me that the genesis of this story was worth exploring.
You will be hard pressed to read another book that understands you as well as 'Leaves of Grass' does. It was made for you in the way that the constellations were made for you. It understands and makes space for your doubts, your love, the guilt and passions of your life and waits for you.
I don't think that books are wondrous, magical things that come from nowhere. It's important that a book has clues about where and how it was written.
There was a lot of fiction I did not enjoy, whose landscapes seemed bland and unevocative, the characters faint-hearted within them, the very words lacking vibrancy.
When I was young, I assumed that authors must have traveled the world or done exotic things in order to tell great stories.
I spent my entire childhood in an environment in which the mighty of the earth had no place outside story books and dreams.
I think that there are empty ecological niches in the literary landscape crying to be filled and when a book more or less fills a niche it's seized on, even when it's a far from perfect fit.
The seed of an idea laying dormant in an old sketchbook is fed the missing ingredient from a new experience. Trying to share some of these experiences, some of the wonders, is one of the reasons why I do books.
It would have been very easy to drift into writing a non-fiction book so by taking it away from Nottingham I forced myself to imagine much more of it.
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