Oh Crap It's NaNoWriMo Again: Fa lalalala la la la la

Someone once asked me if it was hard to write.

The answer is yes... and no.

It's not so much that I want to write it's more a case that I have to write.  Seriously.  My head is a scary place.  It is constantly filled with stories (and not the fluffy bunny kind).  Trust me it's not the sort of place you would want to visit for a holiday.  And the stories I have are not just vague ideas. Oh no as a visual reader/writer I see everything laid out in glorious 3D... with surround sound.  And I'm not just an observer either.  No my head has to go one step further and be a part of the stories so that I am right there next to the characters seeing, hearing, feeling what they do.

It all sounds completely insane I know... or at the very least weird.  Which probably explains a lot.  At least to those that know me.

The hard part of writing for me is turning all those images into words so that what I see etc translates in a way that others can see the same things that I do.  It makes my head spin in circles just trying to think about it.  So I won't.

Instead what I will be doing - at least for the next 30 days - is trying to write 50,000 words because November is the month of NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month for those that don't know.

Of course writing a novel in a month is just about impossible (though I'm sure someone somewhere has done it) but that's not really what NaNo is about.  What it is about is freeing yourself to write.  To stop that inner critic that so many of us writers have and just let our minds and imaginations run free without fear of getting it right the first time around.

What it also means is that I will be doing very little reading *sad face* or watching the latest seasons of Person of Interest and Supernatural *even more sad face* while I hide away in my bedroom and write.  Damn it.

All I can is insanity here I come...

A World Without Libraries?

I love libraries.

And yes I know what you're thinking.  I'm a librarian so of course I would love libraries.

But - and it's a very, very, big but.

My love of libraries would still be there even if I wasn't a librarian.  It's a love affair that I've had since I was a kid and it is, hopefully, a love affair that will continue for a great many more years.

So it always strikes me as rather sad when people talk about how unnecessary libraries are in today's world. 

Libraries have of course been around be for a long time.  Like a very long time.

Almost 4000 years in fact (give or take a century or two).  And in those 4000 years libraries have changed and evolved just like they are changing and evolving now.  They have seen governments and countries rise and fall, the invention of the printing press and computers and the planet ravaged by war, disasters and countless other momentous and significant events.

In the scheme of things libraries are doing pretty good.

And that's how it should be. Because libraries are not only important but necessary.

Forget all the things that you think libraries are about.

Forget about the books, the newspapers, the magazines, the music, the movies, the e-books, and so on and so forth.  Though they have all of that.

And don't even think of them as being depositories and custodians for works of cultural, historical and heritage significance.  Though they are that as well.

No, what libraries really are, at their most basic level, are places of knowledge and ideas and imagination.

And a world without any and all of these things would be a pretty sad place.

Knowledge gives us power.  The power to make choices.  To choose to go right or left or back or forward.

Ideas gives us solutions.  Solutions that see us reach for the stars, to grow beyond what we are, to expand our views and opinions.

And imagination?

Imagination encourages and inspires and ignites us.  It pushes us to reach for the impossible, to dare to dream, to hope, to wonder.

And that is probably the greatest gift that we can pass onto another.

That libraries can do all of these things is pretty damn wonderful.