That’s always been my reason for writing.

C.S. Lewis on writing what you want to read. (The Commonplace Book Project)

The Commonplace Project is a daily post based on Ray Bradbury’s advice to aspiring writers: read a poem, a short story, and an essay every day for 1000 days. These posts start with a quote and go wherever the rabbit hole leads. Follow The 1000 Day MFA so you don’t miss a thing.

“I wrote the books I should have liked to read. That’s always been my reason for writing. People won’t write the books I want, so I have to do it for myself.” — C.S. Lewis, as quote in C.S. Lewis by Roger Lancelyn Green

C.S. Lewis is perhaps single-handedly responsible for my love of middle grade literature. There is a shining moment, between childhood and adolescence when there is still some magic left from one and enough age from the other to take full advantage of it.

That, for me, is the essence The Chronicles of Narnia. And Anne of Green Gables. And Little Women. And The Hobbit. And A Wrinkle in Time. And Mary Poppins. And Pippi Longstocking. And every Roald Dahl book.

Toni Morrison has similar advice to Lewis’s: “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”

I am quite certain I’ll write a whole post someday about Madeleine L’Engle’s similar advice: “You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”

Because I write for children, I often actually ask myself what kind of book I would have wanted when I was in that magical, narrow hallway between childhood and being a teenager.

What would twelve-year-old Shaunta have wanted to read? Stories that were smart and funny. Stories that didn’t talk down to me or assume that I needed to have everything broken down for me. Stories that taught me something, without teaching to me — which I know is a fine line, but one that mattered a lot in an unspoken way to me when I was twelve. I wanted to learn, but I didn’t want to be preached to.

Most of all, I wanted stories that took me away.

When I was twelve, my family was falling apart. I almost never felt safe. I’d been sexually molested by a man who was family enough that the police were never brought in. I was badly bullied in elementary school and had just made the heart-wrenching decision to move in with my father, in large part so that I could change schools. My father was on the outskirts of the thing that would send him to prison in a couple of years.

I was a compulsive reader, when I was twelve. Stories taught me that I could survive. That things would get better. That feeling bad now doesn’t mean that nothing good will ever happen again.

Jo March and Anne Shirley and Susan Pevensie and Meg Murry were my friends. I read their stories over and over. I truly believe that they saved me. I’ve often wondered if how deeply I immersed myself in stories when I was in that space between childhood and adolescence didn’t somehow preserve a little bit of the magic.

My dad and I talked once about how none of my kids read the way I did. All of them appreciate books. It makes sense that I raised readers. But none of them have the compulsion behind their reading that I did. And I’m grateful for that, in a real way. They never needed to be saved by stories the way I did.

I’m watching the 2005 movie adaptation of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe as I write this. I’ve read the book dozens of times. It still lights up that little spark of magic inside me. I’m sure it always will.

When I think about the books I would have liked to read, I know I want to write books with characters who connect deeply with the reader. Books that flirt with magic — especially everyday magic that you have to be in that in between place to experience. Books that have the power to save a kid like the kid I was.

Knowing that is kind of like a roadmap. It helps me mine the ideas that fit my vision, so that I can find the stories that I want to put out into the world. Lucky for me, people did write the kinds of books I wanted. Including C.S. Lewis. I don’t know if I’ll ever be a good enough writer to write something like those books, but I’ll spend my life trying.

I’ve added Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet to my reading list. I’ve read the Chronicles of Narnia so many times, and some of his Christian writing, but I’ve never read any of his other novels.

I found this timeline on the official C.S. Lewis website interesting.

Shadowlands is a 1993 biopic about C.S. Lewis — in particular about his relationship with his wife and how he dealt with her death. It’s well worth watching. There’s a scene that always sticks with me where his wife brings her son to his house and the boy — who is a Narnia fan — finds a wardrobe in the attic. Imagine that.

C.S. Lewis died on November 22, 1963 — as did Aldous Huxley who wrote A Brave New World. The deaths of two literary giants were completely overshadowed by the assassination of John F. Kennedy the same day. The coincidence of these three deaths is the subject of the Between Heaven and Hell, a 1982 book by Peter Kreeft that imagines a conversation between the three men in purgatory.

Today’s Poem is short enough, I’m just going to post it here.

Notes on the Art of Poetry By Dylan Thomas

I could never have dreamt that there were such goings-on in the world between the covers of books, such sandstorms and ice blasts of words, such staggering peace, such enormous laughter, such and so many blinding bright lights, splashing all over the pages in a million bits and pieces all of which were words, words, words, and each of which were alive forever in its own delight and glory and oddity and light.

Here’s my secret weapon for sticking with whatever your thing is.

Shaunta Grimes is a writer and teacher. She is an out-of-place Nevadan living in Northwestern PA with her husband, three superstar kids, two dementia patients, a good friend, Alfred the cat, and a yellow rescue dog named Maybelline Scout. She’s on Twitter @shauntagrimes and is the author of Viral Nation and Rebel Nation and the upcoming novel The Astonishing Maybe. She is the original Ninja Writer.