The Lake of Shining Waters

I live in the most wonderful place in the world. I mean that. I love Lubbock, and I particularly love my particular area of it. I live in an apartment complex that is just across the street from a lovely little park that has a pond in the middle of it. I like to call that pond the Lake of Shining Waters. The name isn't original, of course, it's a reference to Anne of Green Gables, one of my favorite books as a child. Anne thinks that "Barry's Pond" is a dreadful name for such a fine place as the pond in the book, and I agree with her regarding my own pond. The actual name of the park is so boring I don't even remember it. Something like, "So-and-So Memorial Park." Blah. The Lake of Shining Waters is a gorgeous place, especially at night when the moonlight reflects off the water. It deserves far better nomenclature.

(For those of you who have listened to my "I Hate Camping" rant, it might comfort you to know that I do like the outdoors. I just like to enjoy it in small doses, while having the comforts of home nearby. For instance, right now I am listening to the sound of rain and thunder through my open window. It's lovely--a kind of natural symphony--but I'm very glad that I am not out in it getting soaked.)

So anyway, going back to Anne of Green Gables...I always felt a very strong bond with Anne back when I was younger. I always had the feeling that we would have been bosom friends if she had really existed. I am more like Diana Barry than I am like Anne, I suppose, but it seemed like we would have had plenty in common. Like Anne, I was always living in my imagination, making something mundane into something dramatic or just making up stories outright. I even had an imaginary twin that lived in the mirror. (Also, I had a very bad temper. You can ask my brother. I was always the one popping off and getting myself into trouble, while he was always sitting over there, polishing his halo.) I was always writing stories and illustrating them...and when I go back and read them today, it just makes me laugh. For instance, there was one called "The Man Who Didn't Know About Camels." How random is that? I had lots of other stories that usually involved my dolls turning into actual little people and doing interesting things. Sometimes I even wrote sports stories, usually about little girl gymnasts or figure skaters who went to the Olympics and won gold medals. Later I wrote poetry of various kinds, and I have always kept a diary. (One always needs something sensational to read in the train.)

But while writing is still a passion of mine (hence the length of my blog posts), in more recent years I've been wondering where all that creativity went. I just don't have any stories to write anymore. My capacity for stories left me at about the same time that my dolls stopped talking to me. It's a very sad thing, really. All my friends in high school just knew that I was going to be a famous novelist when I grew up (either that or the first woman president, but they weren't taking into account my distaste for politics), and while I don't suppose I've completely given up that dream, it seems a bit unrealistic for me to write when I have nothing to write about. And if you're thinking that perhaps I should try my hand at nonfiction, you may be right, but that just sounds so boring. I always wanted to be the next Tolkien or C.S. Lewis or Jane Austen. Not the next Stephen Ambrose.

There may be hope for me, though. Maybe someday I'll try my hand at historical fiction. I could perhaps write a novel set in ancient Rome (and then my degree would actually be "useful"!). In that case, I could be the next Henryk Sienkiewicz, who wrote Quo Vadis, which is one of the best books I have ever read in my life. ("Quo vadis?" means "Where are you going?" in Latin. Or "Whither goest thou?" if you prefer the King James Version.) It's a novel about the early Christians in Rome, under the reign of Nero. I highly recommend that every Christian read it. It's one of the most powerful and beautiful novels I have ever read, and trust me, I've read a lot. Sienkiewicz actually won the Nobel Prize for literature, so I'm not the only one enraptured by his work. If you read it, be sure to get the newest translation, by W.S. Kuniczak, as it is by far the best. So anyway, if I were to write historical fiction, I don't suppose I could ever quite match Quo Vadis, but I bet I could come up with something. Who knows? Right now, though, college is about all I can handle, so I'll just let this blog be my outlet, despite its being nonfiction and therefore boring. Hehe, oh well.