More Than Just a Story

My favorite things to do in the summer:

* Read books
* Sit in the sun
* Read books while sitting in the sun
* Travel
* Read books while traveling
* Do projects
* Finish a project and go back to reading books in the sun

So last week I finished an ebook romance novel I had put on my Kindle. Being a self-published, non-edited ebook, the writing was less than brilliant. Grammatically it was better proofed than a lot of ebooks; there was, on average, just one poorly constructed sentence or misused pronoun or problem with verb tense per page. I've seen worse. My English teacher's mind quickly fixed the problems, and I continued reading. The story was engaging enough to keep me interested despite the surface errors.

And the writing, overall, wasn't terrible. Sentences were varied nicely, dialogue was decent, and from time to time I found particularly well chosen words that made me pause in admiration. I finished the story, closed my Kindle, and cleaned my oven.

Today I started rereading The Name of the Wind, and the stark difference between merely telling a story (the romance novel) and writing one beautifully (the Rothfuss) knocked my plans to tidy a particular junk drawer straight out of my mind.

Initially, I decided to reread Rothfuss' saga because I wanted to make sure I hadn't inadvertently borrowed ideas. That can happen. For example, I thought the name of my created land would be Calla. I had been looking at names of flowers for inspiration, and "the Realm of Calla" just sounded right. Then one day I was looking for a book in my library and my eyes caught on Stephen King's Dark Tower series book V, Wolves of the Calla. Whoops. It had sounded so nice because it rang a subconscious bell. I found a new name.

The section of my library shelves in consideration.

Now I'm reading in mere astonishment. Every. Blasted. Word. Is. Perfect.

That's what I want. Not to merely tell a story, but to find all the best words to tell the story beautifully.