Literally Blogging

When I was a kid and finished reading a book I loved, I would write a fan letter. But not to the author. To the character I liked the most. I copied the publishing company’s address from the book, and sent the letter away, figuring they’d forward it to Ramona Quimby or whoever I wrote to that day.

Even as a youngster, I understood the concept of writing, as I wrote my own stories from a very young age. I knew about ‘making up’ people and places, but it never seemed right that my favorite characters weren’t ‘real.’ And sometimes I think, well, maybe they are real.

A few years ago, I read a beautiful little book called “Einstein’s Dreams.” It’s an unusual book in that it’s both scientific and literary; both a physics professor and a humanities professor would be equally adept at teaching it. Basically, Einstein falls asleep and we’re privy to his dreams, which contain 30 different short stories about alternate times and dimensions occurring around us. In one world, people live for eternity, in another, for one day. One dimension is frozen in time; even the raindrops hang in mid-air. It’s beautiful and strange and somehow, entirely possible.

What if the world we live in is simply one of these ‘layers?’ It’s conceited to think our way is the only way, isn’t it? While we go ahead with our daily business, right along beside us, though we can’t see it, could be a place where animals talk or time flows backwards.

There could be a world where all our beloved book characters are real.

Anyone who writes knows that it is a strange process, and you don’t so much ‘create’ things as let them flow into you. It’s impossible to force characters to behave; good writers often describe themselves as being more of a medium than a creator, a conduit for inspiration and ideas that use the writer’s body to capture these adventures on paper. So maybe truly gifted writers are not inventors, but are somehow especially in tune with these other worlds, and are able to feel and hear and see things the rest of us can’t.

A while back, I found a rough draft of a letter I wrote Ramona. Here is the first line in its misspelled glory: On the street where you live, are there swiming pools, and, do you have a best friend?

On the street where you live right now, there may be another street, one you can’t see, where an eight-year-old girl fights with her sister Beezus, or a Victorian orphan trudges through the snow.

If you were able to truly see and hear, who do you think you’d find on your street?

He says it’s possible.

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