To Start at the Beginning…

My hunt for The Bookmaker began 10 years ago in the early days of fall. Like all beginnings, there are layers and layers behind it, and I could argue the idea was born further back. But for now, we’ll stick to that day. When I sat outside in a bright blue chair while orange and red maple leaves plopped down onto the ground around me. I was still. Calm. Just like my pen. The clouds were cotton balls that rolled and bounced their way across the sky… and the fact that they moved is essential to this beginning.

There was a half-filled notebook of nonsense in my lap, along with that week’s favourite pen. A latte steamed beside me and there were tiny birds squabbling over the birdseed I had hung up on a bottom branch of the maple. I didn’t know where the beginning was. Or how to make it come out of hiding. The page in my notebook was blank, and white … and silent.

I had no plans to write a book then. Not even a short story. I had no outline, or plot, or problem to solve.

I was only writing to capture the joy I felt at being alone in that bright light with its cool air and noisy birds. Instead of writing I kept getting hypnotized by the light streaming through my wedding ring. It was making little rainbows dance across that white space I wanted to fill up with words. That’s important too. (The way rainbows always follow me).

I finally picked up my pen to describe something – maybe the birds, maybe the feeling of fall. I think I wrote about a man, writing just as I was. He was in a forest and he was writing something with an old quill (because I’ve always wanted to write in a forest with an old quill). It isn’t important what exactly happened in that paragraph. What is important is to see those clouds floating over my head.

The sunshine would solidify around me into a gold bar, hard and bright and vibrant, until the page in front of my eyes glared blindingly white. And then it would loosen its grip, retreat a little and quiet down until the page turned gray and the letters I wrote blackened and hardened in turn. Those clouds were playing tricks on me. And it was during this naughty behaviour, with the clouds trying their best to distract me, that I saw the shadow of my hand following my pen across the white page. It would darken for a second or two, and then disappear under each cloud.

It was then that an idea came and found me. It crept into my head, plunked itself down, and wondered about that shadow popping up and then disappearing. The idea claimed it looked rather like a small, hunched over old man carrying a long stick over his shoulder. But why was he following my fingers?

And that is where my hunt for the Bookmaker began.