Blog 1003 – 05.24.2018

When A Writer Whets Your Appetite

One of the first times that I remember finding such a writer was in college many years ago and the writer was C.S. Lewis. Though his much wider vocabulary was a challenge for me, I read him with a dictionary close by. His thoughts and challenging ideas had me seeking everything of his that I could find in print including his books written for children and his space trilogy. And after I exhausted all that I could find of his in print I searched through used book stores and rare book lists for other older writings to satisfy my desire to read everything he had ever written.

I also about this same time fell in love with the novels of Taylor Caldwell and read everything that I could find by her. A couple of my special favorites “The Listener” and “The Captains And The Kings” I have read several times and still enjoy reading again every few years.

My list of beloved and oft read authors also contains Wally Lamb. John Irving, Pat Conroy, Dean Koontz, Stuart Woods, John Grisham, Nicolas Sparks, Nora Roberts, Ann Rice, and I am always looking for new authors to add to my pantheon.

This is the kind of author that I know is in me too. And one day perhaps others will know that too and when that happens I want them to have plenty of my writing to go back to and to read. The first novel John Grisham ever wrote was A Time To Kill and nobody wanted to publish it but after he had several number one best sellers they wanted everything he had ever written, published it too, and made a great movie of it with popular movie stars.

A friend tells me often that I am improving as a writer and as a poet, and singer and getting better and better. With my slightly skewed view I see that as I do many things a bit differently. My writing and songs are to me like my children and my first child was no less beloved and gifted that my last. I loved and love them both equally and I prefer to think that we are more than “becoming” but that we have actually always “been.” To quote another of my favorite writers, Tony Burroughs we are, “Magnificent beings awakening to our highest potential.”

Lastly, I quote again for the I don’t know the what-th time, and isn’t that the way great writing affects us – we want to read it again and again and quote it again and again. Mike Dooley writes and says often, “Thoughts become things, choose the good ones.” And I add words and the writers who skillfully use them too.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White

Further note:

I purposely left a lot of wonderful religious and philosophical writers off my brief list of favorite well and often read writers and also non-fiction, fantasy, mystery, romance, adventure, and science-fiction writers too. But I feel I must mention two of my favorite fiction writers – Madeline L’Engle and Robert Heinlein. If it is true that we are what we eat it is certainly true that we are also what we read and think, fact or fiction.