If the time I have spent on specific activities during my life had to be presented graphically, the biggest segment of the pie-chart would undoubtably represent the time spent reading.
Books are magical. They educate, guide, comfort, entertain and provide an escape from the mundane and the depressing. There are few activities as rewarding as losing oneself in a well-written book. You may be awed by the absolute literary elegance of Harper Lee, laugh out loud at Terry Pratchett’s comic presentation of humanity’s worst traits and marvel at the fantastic imagination of Stephen King. There are books to enrich the life of every person every day.
As with writers, history has produced many truly impressive orators who have or had the gift to convert and stir crowds into action. The passionate conviction of Martin Luther King tore down social barriers. Hitler’s fiery nationalism left the whole world in chaos for years. Locally and more recently, the relatable humour of Trevor Noah has become a national treasure, and many people pray, swear or change the channel when our little racist in red gets hold of a microphone.
The gift of the garb has passed me by. I quite like socialising with close friends and like everyone, I have opinions that I hope may be worth sharing. I am however painfully aware of my lacking oratory skills. I suspect I sound like a dork and my tongue usually seems to operate at a very different speed to my mind. Verbal sparring in my world can be depicted with the image of that annoying little “buffering” icon in the neural pathway between my brain and my mouth.
Writing is where I feel more at ease. The first advantage of written versus oral debate, is that nobody can hear me. The second advantage is that my brain has some time to engage. This usually involves the initial evaluation of whether I at least vaguely understand what the topic on hand may be. The few morsels of knowledge on the topic are then cornered in my memory-rondavel, whereafter the small store of illusive logic is raided. From the shelve stocked with cognitive cosmetics, some borrowed wisdom and any available wit will be retrieved, and everything is then mashed together to form an opinion. The process of gathering my thoughts and reducing these to writing (with extensive reliance on the Microsoft Word synonym- and spelling- functions) takes some time. Often the initial topic has already been archived by then, but I can at least avoid serious embarrassment.
When I wrote the 3G series, I knew that marketing would be important if I truly hoped to sell my books. I was repeatedly reminded that social media presented one of the very best platforms for marketing and that a Facebook account was an essential marketing tool. I always feared that writing blogs and posting material on social media was a bad idea. I never wanted to give the impression that I am arrogant, subjectively opinionated, sensationalist or terminally biased. I then realised that thousands of journalists and millions of others are doing it daily, so what the hell?
Therefore, here I am, reducing my subjective opinions to writing and recklessly hurling it at my 4.2 weekly readers. I will eagerly wait to see if my opinions on modern pop, generation gaps, stereotyping and silly phrases prove to be instrumental in selling action thrillers.