This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
Have you ever been so inspired by an author’s work that you wish you could tell them exactly how much they have impacted your life? In this series, Literary Love Letters, we will be doing just that – sharing open love letters to inspiring authors. Today, The Judas Scar author Amanda Jennings writes to Anne Tyler.
Dear Anne,
That sounds terribly familiar, doesn’t it? Calling you by your first name, as if I’m somehow claiming friendship? As if you are familiar to me. But, of course, you are familiar to me. Your books sit on my bookshelves and beside my bed and on the table in my hall. I do know you or at least you have allowed me to believe I know you. In reading your words, words that are so effortless, so restrained and yet so resonant, you have allowed me into yourself. Years ago, when I opened the pages of The Accidental Tourist – the first book of yours I read – I felt a quickening in my heart as you showed me the excitement, intrigue, and complexity in every one of your apparently ‘average’ characters. But that’s what you see, isn’t it? That not one of us is ‘average’, that our eccentricities, experiences and prejudices complicate us. Your story people bristle with energy and profundity, and each is as delicate and unique as a snowflake.
Your new book, A Spool of Blue Thread landed on my door mat three days ago. It sits on the hall table and every time I pass it I enjoy a shiver of anticipation. It waits like a box of the finest chocolates for the moment I can finally open its pages and immerse myself in the lives of those people that breathe within it. Isn’t that wonderful? That you make me fizz with expectation? I wonder what observations you’ve made, what words you’ve chosen as you view afresh the life we take for granted. I wonder what humour and warmth you’ve observed in situations where others see none?Your writing is a constant reminder to stare hard at the seemingly mundane and superficial in search of the rich veins of gold that run through life. To see the array of imperfect yet perfect human tapestries that knit together to form our world. Dear Anne, you remind me each of us is valuable, that however hopeless, however lost, however unnoticed, each of us is as glorious as the next. You see the soul in your characters and your gift is to display their souls for us. So thank you for your Macons and your Muriels. For your Barnabys and your Bitsys and your Paulines, but most of all thank you for the inspiration.
With love,
Amanda xx
This week, Amanda is offering fans the opportunity to have their name appear in a forthcoming novel. She is one of over 70 bestselling authors including involved in the Get in Character eBay auction, an annual fundraiser organised by CLIC Sargent, the UK’s leading cancer charity for children and young people, and their families. The highest bidders for each author buy the opportunity to have a character named after them in their next book, and immortality in print. The auction runs until 8pm Sunday, March 8th.
For more information about Get in Character, visit www.clicsargent.org.uk/getincharacter or to make a bid visit https://stores.ebay.co.uk/clic-sargent-get-in-character