Stories
I’ve always loved stories. Both fantastic and realistic, incredible and credible. Stories are, I would argue, the most brilliant mechanism for blocking out everything else in the world. They are also capable of bringing an unfathomable sense of peace. My preferred medium of experiencing a story is through the magic of reading. Like many, I assume, my life has been marked by a series of books. They may not have all been concocted by the same wordsmith, or be the same genre, but they have all had a significant impact on who I am and how I view the world.
In my particular case, I assume once again that I am not alone in this, there was one story that caught me in its web and got me hooked, as it were, on the written word. Now believe it or not, I cannot for the life of me remember the name of this book, who it was that penned it, or what it was about. For such a life changing event that’s quite shocking, wouldn’t you agree? All I can remember is that I was approximately eight or nine years old and I had brought a book home from school. This was not the first book I had read, indeed I had been reading for some years prior to this I imagine. It’s difficult to recollect.
So yes, this was not the first book I had read, but it was the first which took hold of me so forcibly that I simply could not put it down. It did not leave my person at any point that night. Wherever I went, the book came too. I distinctly recall wandering around the house with my neck at ninety degrees and absolutely no awareness of my surroundings whatsoever.
This of course led to years of reading in bed before sleep, reading safely in the tent while it poured outside on family camping trips, and then on into adulthood where time to read becomes a little less easy to come by. On occasion reaching the point where the only time I am able to find for literature is on the train to and from work. It’s frightfully sad to realise that time for stories can be so hard to come by.
So we come to today. Today I decided to write. It’s been quite some time since I did so. Admittedly I go through the process of putting words into phrases and then those phrases into sentences on a daily basis. But that’s my job. Copywriting and translations may pay the bills but it certainly isn’t what writing really is to me personally. Writing to me is allowing my mind to venture into a make-believe world, to explore my imagination, and tell the stories I would want to read myself.
The first time I ventured into the realm of storytelling, aside from the times you are forced to as a pupil, was at the age of fifteen. Fresh off the back of yet another Bernard Cornwell novel I decided that it was about time I put into words one of the many exciting stories I had running around in my head. Of course every young (or old) scribe has dreams of success, critical acclaim, and bestseller after bestseller hitting the shelves, but in that moment when you begin, you begin for the love of storytelling.
Five years have now passed since I last put pen to paper, “typing” doesn’t conjure the same image, and that’s why I’m writing now, to recapture the wonderful feeling that comes from telling a story.
Hello dear reader,
I sincerely hope you enjoyed this story. If you happened to like it, please consider recommending it and maybe giving me a follow. Also, if you have any feedback I’d love to hear it, whether positive or constructive criticism.
If you would like to tweet at me, you are welcome to do so here: www.twitter.com/AllibandDave
Thanks for reading, it means a lot!
Best regards,
David Alliband
