The random inspiration of libraries

Hi friends,

It’s been way too long since I’ve been to the public library. I’ve been thinking about that magic I felt as a kid when I got my very first library card. It was my first card of any kind, and it made me feel so grown up and important. Plus, it was a ticket to any book I could want.

Throughout my life I’ve loved many different kinds of libraries: school libraries with their colorful rugs to sit on and read; public libraries with their inviting bright rows of shelves; university libraries with their mysterious dark mazes of stacks holding every kind of book you could imagine; museum libraries; little free libraries (including this sweet fairy mailbox); personal libraries; café libraries; the Bristol Art Library, the brainchild of artist Annabel Other, a fully functioning public library of artists’ books housed in a wooden cabinet the size of a small suitcase; and the list goes on.

The Bristol Art Library

Of course bookstores are full of inspiration and wonder too, but I’m less likely to take a chance on a random book if I have to pay for it.

Recently my friend and I were talking about a phenomenon we’ve both experienced at the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts on our weekend DIY writing retreats. Every apartment there comes equipped with a bookshelf full of books, some provided by Saltonstall, some left behind by previous tenants. No two apartments have the same books on their shelves, and the inventory in all them changes over time as people come and go, so there’s always something new to find.

What Kathy and I both discovered is that every time we pull books off those shelves, even ones that have nothing to do with our works-in-progress, we find something to inform our writing—something we didn’t know we were even looking for. I built an entire chapter of my debut novel about a genderqueer character around an idea I discovered in a book on those shelves.

More recently, I pulled Derek Jarman’s Chroma off my own shelves at home to read for inspiration. It has no connection to my novel-in-progress, but it was calling to me, so I put it by my writing desk, and every morning I read a few pages before I begin working. Last week, it led to me Pliny’s Natural History, specifically a passage about marble that perfectly encapsulates something I’ve been trying to show in the first chapter of my novel.

Sometimes I also turn to random books that include portrait photography to help me with character development or help me find characters for new work. A number of my short stories started out as one of those photos.

So I guess what I want to share this week is that I’d like to give up a little control over what I read. To make more time to browse libraries for books I might never otherwise pick up. To read more broadly across more genres. To intentionally allow books guide me to other books. Not 100 percent of the time, but enough to let more imagination and possibility into my reading and writing. I’m excited to see where it will take me.

I’d love to hear your stories about stumbling onto exciting, useful, beautiful, magical, or strange things in random books. Meanwhile, happy writing and reading!

Yours,

Jen