Ex-kept in books

"But as I look at all the cherishable, unusual, unexpected and simply beautiful little books on my shelves, held...loved...written in...with flowers pressed, letters hidden and tears stained...I'm afraid the ebook will never match that!" James Mayhew's point - about those things we keep between the pages of our beloved books?

Here are just a few mementos I found in one of my cherished books of childhood.


"Don't jump off of the roof dad, you'll make a big hole in the yard. Mother's just planted petunias, the weeding and seeding was hard..."

This book now belongs to my daughter.

It is now a book of a cherished child, complete with her first drawing of a wolf! And that dark thing, in the margin - that's a little gem.

What are some of the beloved things you've kept in your books?

Stylistics

I've had a week of some disappointment, tempered with some kind words, some harsh words, some honest words, and lots of great advice; for everything but the disappointment I have a writer named Andrea to thank. She has a terrific blog:

http://acatofimpossiblecolour.blogspot.com/

which is shrine to all things style, and literary, and obviously some of the style rubbed off on the literary because she is about to have a book published!

And I have had a week in which to think, what if?

What if I couldn't be a writer? What would I do? What could I do?

I'll start with the last question.

I could be a painter: I paint, I'm not too awful, I could do that...maybe...if I had to...but I like to keep that as my hobby, my pass time: it helps me unwind, helps me to think, helps me see the words to paint my stories - writing and painting are both art. I write in pictures anyway, writing is much more than words to me.

I would probably continue to look after my kids, be a stay at home mum until my youngest starts school and then go into teaching - the thing I was meant to do some years ago - the thing I took my highschool maths five times for (I have dyscalculia...numbers and I have a strange relationship: I'm like an accidental, A sexual patron in a strip club - numbers are the strippers who dance around me, I'm not allowed to touch and I don't get them). I would teach...if I had to...I would enthuse a generation with the love of words, I would infuse their senses with the love of language...I would amuse them with my love of books; 'this one smells like a good 'un' I'd say.
It would come back to writing somehow.

If I couldn't be a writer, I couldn't be a painter, a teacher, a mother; simply, I couldn't be me.

I will write because I have to. It's what I have done since I was as old as my daughter is now, and I took my story to show my teacher and she said, 'but they're not your words' - but they were. To get one of my stories published would be a huge buzz, an achievement, and a way - besides my children - to achieve immortality. I would jump up and down until I felt sick and dizzy, and shout 'weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!' I would run with barefooted jubilance down the street, and exclaim, 'they are my words!' And then I would go back to being me; and write - quietly, because my books would be shouting.

If I never get a book published I will write.