Four Corners Writer's Group

I found myself wandering through the book aisle in warehouse store the other day, beating down the all-too familiar urge to pick up every book and stroke it. You see, I have an addiction to books. I am addicted to buying them, holding them, smelling them, feeling the paper in my hands and turning their beautiful pages.

It's the reason people ask me how I can own an e-reader. Where's the romance? Where's the love of the book? they ask. You are murdering books and the publishing industry as we know it.

I've actually been told that. Ouch.

I think if you took one look at my "living room" (which has been transformed into our "library") anyone could tell I love me some tree-books. Although most of them were bought before I had a Nook (and a way to e-read), many have been bought after.

But standing in the store using all my will-power not to pick up yet another to add to my collection, I realized there is a difference between loving books, and loving reading.

I love them both.

I love the books - holding them and flipping through them and seeing the colors of the cover and being able to read the front and the back at practically the same time. The physical book is part of the enjoyment of reading.

But it is not everything.

Most of the enjoyment of reading itself comes from the story - one which can be read between covers, or on an electronic device, which, I admit, is also attractive to me. I love the smoothness of the plastic, the way the buttons click just so, the way the words change magically in front of my face as I "turn" pages. The touch screen I am addicted to.

The fact that I can read on an electronic device actually helps me keep engaged in the book, ironically. When reading with a tree-book, I find myself breaking away every now and then, checking my phone, my computer. I am torn between my two addictions.

But when I read on an e-reader, I feed them both at the same time. Subconsciously, my fingers are soothed by the clicking through the pages, and I don't feel the need to constantly check my emails and social media. I am more free to get lost in the story. And as strange as this sounds, I'm not alone. In the book, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distractions, the author Alan Jacobs says the same thing.

And when people like to point out that e-readers are going to be the death of books, I like to point to the iPod. Did that kill music? Indeed not! It's true that there are less physical music stores out there. The album is rare, tapes almost non-existant, and CDs probably dwindling. But music continues to thrive, more now than ever. By making music more portable, more immediately accessible, less expensive, consumers tend to buy and listen to more. More artists have the ability to get their voice out there to be heard.

The digitization of books is similar. E-readers allow e-books, and e-books allow more authors to have their shot at publication, allow more competition, which eventually I believe will lead to better quality. The people I know who use their electronic readers primarily, buy more books. They read more. They read far more than they used to read tree-books. They spend far more money on books than they did before.

Maybe people miss music stores, but I haven't heard many people moaning over it lately. People like being able to listen to entire albums online before buying, buying only the songs they love, downloading it immediately when they hear a song.

I don't know that physical book stores will go away in the same manner, but I think if they do, the transition will be long, and by then we'll be weaned enough that we don't miss them as much. We aren't there now, for sure. My own drooling in the grocery store aisle is testament to that. But I also can see a future where there are more books being published, more access to them, and less expense (to say nothing of less space required to keep them in my house!).

Change is rarely easy. Some of us will go kicking and screaming. And others... like a frog in boiling water we'll someday look around and say, "Wait a minute? When did this happen?" Luckily, we're not frogs, and we'll survive whatever comes just fine.

I have imaginary friends. They have conversations in my head. Then I write it down.

One of the trappings of amateur writing is to create one-dimensional characters, protagonists that are all good and antagonists that are all evil. Let’s face it though: even comic book superheroes have weaknesses; how much more should regular human characters, be they fictional or non-fictional?

Although Mortenson and Relin’s biographical book, Three Cups of Tea, has been criticized for showing Mortenson in a biased and all-too-heroic light, I disagree. There is plenty of flaw in this mountaineer-turned-humanitarian, and that is what made him come alive on the pages, and, if possible, seem even more heroic.

Although listed as co-authors, it’s fairly clear that the majority of this book is written by David Oliver Relin. It presents a third person point of view biography of the man who has come to be known as Dr. Greg. The story begins with a failure and a triumph. On his way to conquer K2, mountain climber Greg Mortenson is called off-course, after already climbing eight times to high camp with the expedition’s food and oxygen stock, to save another climber suffering from pulmonary and cerebral edema. Though it might be easy to paint Mortenson as a superhero who trekked up and down K2 saving lives, it’s this saving of the life that saps his energy and costs him his bid for the summit. Once a helicopter rescues the ill climber at the lower camp where he has been dragged, Mortenson is left to descend the rest of the mountain on his own, where he gets lost and ends up quite sick himself in a small Pakistan village that has never seen a foreigner.

Although this failure brings about the life-changing plans to build schools for the impoverished children of Pakistan, it never seems far from Mortenson’s mind. Failure itself seems to hang over him hard, even through the successes, as he lives in his car and in crack-addled hostiles, faces empty rooms where no one shows to hear him talk, and waits long days for replies to hundreds of pleas for funding that never come.

It is not just his external circumstances that scream failure; Mortenson himself is full of flaws. His work is seemingly disorganized, his basement office “an embarrassing mess.” He appeared depressed, often hiding from the world and his family when he is back in the United States and eventually is given the name of a therapist when he is unable to cope with the depression and anger towards people who want more time than he has to give. He left his family – first a wife, then eventually two children as well – for months at a time, traveling overseas to Pakistan, Afghanistan and India as well as around the country on fund-raising missions. In charge of the Central Asian Institute, Mortenson frustrated his fellow board members with his inability to delegate tasks and allow others in on the planning, leaving them with the knowledge that without him, the charitable work in the middle east through CAI would cease to be. He also became obsessed about the work to the point where “he stopped climbing and exercising. He stopped sleeping. He began to gain so much weight that he didn’t even look like a mountaineer anymore.”

Even in his more heroic acts, he stumbles. When making good on his promise to build the first school, he is ineffective on fundraising. He entrusts his load of cement and lumber to a Pakistani who hides it and uses it for himself and as ransom to get Mortenson to build a school in his town instead. Once he is ready to bring the materials to the town, he is told there is no way to get them there across the river as there is no bridge. Although there will be many instances in which Mortenson comes up against brick walls not of his own doing ­– such as the Taliban kidnapping of him and the destruction of his passport– there are plenty of times in which Mortenson himself seems to not plan enough and not handle the finances well enough.

He is, however, aware of these failings, and they serve to only send him into further withdrawals at home. When Mortenson is quoted, he is self-effacing and humble in his accomplishments, often giving credit to others

The fact is that what Mortenson does accomplish – building more than 81 schools and bringing clean water pipelines as well as other community improvements – in a region of the world that hates Americans and is at war with them, in a culture he does not initially know, with a language he does not speak, with no contacts or friends or political backing – is amazing. It would be amazing if a superhero with only an aversion to cryptonite did it. The fact that Mortenson, a humble, disorganized, self-conscious and shy individual has done it is what makes it so very heroic.

For writers of fiction or non-fiction this is a lesson to be learned: let the weaknesses shine. Not only does this make for a more believable character, but it makes their victories more triumphant.

It's been a concern of mine for years: writing characters that resemble me a little too closely!

There’s no doubt that people pick up The Art of Racing in the Rain because of the too-close photo of the dog on the front and the fact that it’s written from a dog’s point of view. Enzo the dog makes a tremendous and unique narrator, and that choice for this book is brilliant. But it was not Enzo that kept me reading this book. As cute and philosophical and creative as that point of view is, what kept me glued to page after page until way too late at night was the plot – the fact that event after event piled on top of each other moved the book in such a way that even the dog lazing in the sun couldn’t slow it down.

I'd written, rewritten, and revised. I sent it around to be read and critiqued. I made more changes. I added a few scenes, clarified some details, but most importantly, chopped thousands of words.

December 6th is a holiday in Germany called St. Nikolaus day. St. Nikolaus is portrayed as a grey-haired man with a flowing beard who wears bishop's robe, a golden cape and carries a staff. He visits the children to enquire about their behavior during the past year. On Monday, St. Nikolaus was seen all over Germany riding his horse and surrounded by small figures with painted black faces who passed out cakes and candy to the children.