Butterfly

Planning takes a back seat, due to the flu bug sweeping Britain.  One of my children succumbs and so we make a bed up in the lounge, light the fire and quietly read together.

I’ve always encouraged my children to believe that they are readers – whatever kind of reader they choose to be.  It’s tempting if your kids read comics and nothing else to hassle them to read ‘proper’ books.  But the danger is that parents are prone to choose different books for their children than children would choose for themselves, perhaps the titles they enjoyed themselves when they were young.  If children read what appeals to them personally – not necessarily what their parents promote – then they will perceive reading as fun.  They might even get hooked.

As for me – well reading is work!  Phillip Pullman once said (and he borrowed it from Muhammad Ali), ‘Read like a butterfly and write like a bee.’  It’s so tempting to sit and do your own writing and forget that you can learn so much from reading other people’s books.  I am training myself to read like a writer - with one eye and half my brain looking for just how this author made this character so believable, or that sentence so beautiful, or this story such a page-turner.

As the morning turns into afternoon, I am perfectly happy turning someone else’s pages.  It’s the story - with all its complexities, with the emotional truths it uncovers, the experiences beyond the everyday that it gives – that’s the reason I read.

It’s why I write too.

But that will have to wait until Monday…