Other People's Thoughts

Katherine Press would like to welcome Andrea Rouda as a guest Blogger this week.  Enjoy!

Other People's Thoughts

Back when my son was a teenager, his gang of friends came by most days after school to raid our refrigerator and decompress. One of them was a bright boy named Sam who I liked quite a bit, and who I found to be smarter than some of the others. Unlike my own son, who studiously avoided me in front of his peers so as not to be labeled a “Momma’s Boy,” Sam and I often had interesting conversations over the microwave on what was being taught in school that particular day or week. Our favorite topic was literature, and as a freelance writer I especially liked keeping up with the current curriculum, although it seemed that no matter what year it was, it was always Shakespeare’s plays, “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Huckleberry Finn.”

One afternoon, while waiting for his pepperoni pizza Hot Pocket to reach perfection, Sam declared he was no longer interested in reading fiction. I was stunned. Naturally I asked why. “Books are all about someone else’s thoughts and ideas,” he said. “I already have my own, and until I run out of things to think about, I’m going to concentrate on those.”

That was seven or eight years ago, and at the time I dismissed Sam’s comments as childish at best and foolish at worst. In the interim I have written many articles, published a few pieces of fiction and produced a daily blog, of course counting on perfect strangers to be interested in my thoughts. At the same time, I’ve always been an avid reader of fiction -- the occasional biography does slip in, usually after someone famous dies and I suddenly want to know all about their life. But lately Sam’s assessment of books has come back to haunt me, usually in the middle of reading one that isn’t all that great. It’s then that I remember—hey, these are somebody else’s thoughts--I have my own! At that point I usually put the book down, never to return.

This is the quandary of being a writer. When you’re reading, you wonder why you’re not writing. If you’re reading a great book, it inspires you to work on that story you started and to try this or that, so you stop and go do that. If you’re reading something less than great, it’s suddenly a waste of valuable time when you could be working on your novel or finishing up that article or pitching a story to someone, somewhere. It’s a bit like eating bad food in a restaurant when you’re a good cook: what am I doing here?

Of course, exceptions must be made. We all have favorite books that we go back to for the sheer pleasure of reading words we already know so well, but each time finding some nuance for the first time. In my case, it’s Edith Wharton’s “Ethan Frome.” Lucky for me it’s only about 90 pages, so I can take it on without feeling guilty about abandoning my own thoughts for too long.

I ran into Sam again; he’s 24 now, out of college and back to reading. “It was just a phase,” he said when I reminded him of his high-school declaration. I may be in that phase myself; hopefully it will pass.

Andrea J. Rouda is a seasoned artist and writer. Her illustrations and articles have appeared in the Washington Post, the Deseret News, The New Yorker, Yankee and Communicator magazines, and on many websites. The screenplay adaptation of her comic novel, “Shrink Rapt,” is currently in the pipeline for production. A serial employee, Rouda has held 46 jobs. She currently freelances from her home in coastal Maine, where she and her husband live with the three cats who run the place.  Read her daily humor blog, ROTO-ROUDA, at:

http://arouda.blogspot.com/