Dunedin and the written word

Just left the city of Dunedin, one of the southern most cities in the world. A pleasant place with a rich Scottish heritage. I was there for about four days and other than an amazing night trip to see little blue penguins (the smallest penguin in the world) up close and it the wild my time there was mostly focused around the written word, either mine own or others.

I have been traveling with 1-4 other people for a while now. Recently it has been at least three or four. I love my friends and value them more than I can express right now. Still, for me being with people all the time is trying. I don't know why, I can do it and enjoy it, but every once in a while I simply need a break. Dunedin afforded this. Generally the other four stayed together and I sort of did my own thing for most of the days. Aside from some minor site seeing and a trip to the Otago museum (quality for a city of under 150,000) that mostly meant either things related to reading or writing.

I appreciate New Zealand more than any country save the one of my birth. Still most of it is in serious want of a good used-book store. I happen to have a healthy appreciation for a good used-book store. Even an average one for that matter. So far though, since I have left Wellington I have been unimpressed. Most of the places I run into are filled 80% with paperback trash. Most of it either romance novels or unsaleable crap. Gems can be found, at least in fiction. I tracked down a nice little copy of 'Gulliver's Travels' (Swift), which I rather unfortunately lost part the way through. I then found and made reasonable work of a nice hardback copy of 'The Personal History of David Copperfield' (Dickens). Since I finished that about a week ago I was without a book of my own and had been borrowing others. I read a clever little paperback call 'Lamb' (Moore) which reminded my of an old ambition (we'll get to that). Mostly I have been dying to read some non-fiction, something I haven't done in a while. Non-fiction is really hard to find in used-bookstores.

I was excited to learn that Dunedin had a reputation for having quality book shops and had a couple recomended to me by a book store owner in a small town I had recently been in. I stopped in a few and bought three books at one of the shops, a proper book-shop called Scribes. It was perhaps the most disparate three books I've ever bought.

First was The History of Europe by J.M. Roberts the author of the single volume history of the world I read a little over a year ago.

Second was 'The Earth, My Butt and Other Big Round Things' (Mackler) a generally critically aclaimed work of fiction ... aimed at adolescent girls. I love Young Adult literature and as I hope to write a YA novel, its 1 part research, 1 part fun.

Third is The Bible (God?). I've been meaning to do this one for a little while now. Since I bought it a number of people have asked me why. I'm not religious, though to be fair I have long since disaubused myself of my teenage angst anti-organized religion condescension. No this isn't an act of faith by of scholarship. It is important to me that I continue to learn and become a well rounded person academically, even outside of school (where I never learned much anyway). So why the Bible? Well regardless of your personally feelings on it's contents the Jewish/Christian Bible is the most influencial book, most influencial thing ever written. I could expand on why that is but I couldn't effectively tackle the subject in 1,000 or even 10,000 words. Instead I will leave it one statement: The Bible is overwhelmingly the most read book in the history of the world. If for now other reason that demands that it be read by anyone wishing to better understand our world.

But I'm going one step further. The copy of the bible that I purchased had amongst other helpful bits a guide reading the Bible in one year. If went day by day with 365 check boxes along with passages, in order that you would need to read each day to finish it in a years time. I scoffed, a year. Who needs a year to read the Bible. I know it's long, but come on. So one of my friends asked me how long I thought it would take me. I said I didn't know exactly, but I bet I could do it in a month if I really wanted to. The topic was discussed, they said I wouldn't do it. Too much time, too boring. Never one to back to down from a challenge (often as not to my detriment) I said I'd do it. So that's the plan, the entire Bible in a month. I'm on day three. It's already harder than I thought it would be but I'm ahead of pace. Still it will be tough to keep up. To do this I have to spend around 3 hours a day reading it. I've read Genesis, Exodus, and Leviticus so far, I'm on Numbers. Unfortunately aside from the first half of exodus this isn't exactly the most fun part to read. Theres virutally no story most of the time and it lacks the poetry of some of the later works. Still, I persevere. I think it's good that I am doing it this way. By reading it in a month I won't be too far removed from Genesis by the time I'm reading Revalations. It should help get the whole scope of the thing. At least for short time. I'm not going to save any thoughts on the material for now.

When I wasn't buying books or reading them I was writing. I spent a few hours writing that travel piece below and the rest of the time finishing the first draft of my first Novella. I think I've mentioned it here in the past but not for a long time. It is about a seventeen year old that gets a job washing dishes at an Italian restaraunt in San Francisco. It is inspired by my experience working at a restaraunt and some of the people I worked with. It is however by no means autobiographical, it is very much a work of ficiton. When it started it was supposed to be a short stort, about 7500 words, but I quickly realized that I would need something much larger for the scope of what was in my head. My expectations changed enough times that I stopped trying to predict the lenght and and just let it go. At the end of the first draft it's just over 35,000 words, but will likely get a little longer in revision. I had taken a break at around 22,000 words because I was traveling around a lot, but also because I had lost sense of where it was going and didn't know how to end it. Dunedin seemed to be the muse I needed. I wrote for hours a day over the next few days and surprised even myself by competing it. I'm generally pretty happy with the ending. I'm also proud of myself. I've worked hard on this and it's a big stepping stone for me as a writer. It is the longest, most fictional thing I have ever written. It also contained a great deal of dialogue, something I had been struggling with but am now a great deal more comfortable writing. It is still amatuerish even to myself when I read over it, but I can also see that I am getting better. When I look back to what I was writing in October and November it feels awful and that can only be a good thing.