A Literary Achievement?

One of my relatives used to often tell me she was writing a book.  I knew her to be a cosmetician who was mostly interested in beauty and hair styling.  I thought she liked to read but I wasn’t sure how well she could write.  I used to get my hair cut at the salon where she worked and she wanted to do my colors as they say, or use the principles in a popular book in the 1980s to tell me what colors of clothing I should wear.

I eventually let her do my colors one day when I was at the salon.  She told me I was a ‘Winter’ which meant I should wear clear, bright colors such as white, black, red, bright blue, emerald green and more.  This was fine with me as those were some of the colors I preferred anyway.  I wasn’t sure I completely agreed with her about limiting the shades and hues of colors I would wear to such a small spectrum.  I never really paid too much attention to what she had told me.

When I eventually read the book she had told me she was writing, I found it to be a recapitulation of the other popular book about the colors a person should wear.  This was kind of what I had expected but I still felt odd about it because she wanted me to give her feedback on her book.  It seemed more like a booklet to me, and the sort of thing someone would hand out at some weird seminar.  It definitely wasn’t a literary achievement in any sense.

Now my boyfriend is writing a book.  I feel much differently about his writing efforts.  I have read many of the writing tips he’s written and I know how talented he is.  He is also a huge reader and has literary sensibilities that show all the time in how he speaks and what he has to say.  I am glad he is writing a book even though he has never tried to before.  I am excited to see what he comes up with.  I think it might be a literary achievement.  We’ll see, but I know that he’s making it funny.  He’s got a great sense of humor so I know it will at least be humorous.  All in all I certainly feel very different about his efforts than other people who have told me of their writing projects.

Tagged as: write a novel, writing a book, writing books, writing novel, writing tips