Abusing Books & Writing In Bed

This morning I lay in my bed, pondering life's losses, thinking I needed to be writing. I've been trying to write for a greeting card company and they recommend speaking from the heart, as if you were writing to someone you cared about. Something came to me, and as usual I had too much written in my head when it occurred to me I would never remember it all. I rolled over to my nightstand, where there is a cup of pens, but no paper. What kind of writer am I? No paper? The kind with a laptop downstairs I suppose, but there was a reason I was still in bed and I wasn't ready to abandon it. Next to the pens and picture frame and nail polish, was the book I was reading before bed; Trading Up, by Candace Bushnell. Yes, I do dream of Central Park and the MOMA, who doesn't?

Anyway, I thought of writing my mind's scribbles in those two or three blank pages that every book has and immediately remembered one of my closest friends critiquing a book of mine a long time ago. Maybe it was Two Sides of Wilde? The character, Amelia Hiller, (yes, it was Wilde)who owned a bookstore, had folded over the corner in a page of her book, to mark it, as she got up to do something or other. My friend, a writer, had scolded me, insisting "no true book lover would ever dog ear a page like that." It made me sad as I considered myself a 'true' book lover and I dog ear all the time, or at least I did. My shame has since caused me to collect bookmarks.

I always thought the more rough a book looked, the more loved it had been. I mean what are headers and margins for anyway? I imagined dog ears and notes in the margins and God forbid coffee stained pages! That's a book that's been around, shared...read. I know, a first edition of Wuthering Heights is a different story, but we live in the day of mass publication and paperback.

So I did it. I wrote my greeting card snippet before the title page of Trading Up. I wonder if my friend, or Candace, or Carrie would approve? :)


p.s.

I wrote half of this blog in my phone, before finally rummaging around the room to find a tiny notebook. At least I didn't have to go downstairs. When I write with one ear on the mattress, I can hear my penstrokes and nothing else.