Who wants to become a writer?
Enid Bagnold on writing. (Commonplace Book Project)
You can find all the posts in The Commonplace Book Project here:
“Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it’s the answer to everything. … It’s the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it’s a cactus.” — Enid Bagnold
I thought I’d do a little series-within-a-series and focus my Commonplace Book for a while on authors of books that have meant a lot to me.
(DISCLAIMER: This post contains affiliate links.)
Enid Bagnold is the author of one of the stories that saved my life when I was a girl. National Velvet.
In case you’ve never read it, National Velvet (written in 1935) is the story of a girl named Velvet Brown who trains and rides her horse, The Piebald, in the Grand National steeplechase.
I took National Velvet out of my elementary school library at least half a dozen times. I read it over and over. Velvet Brown taught me that even a kid can work hard and do something big.
I needed that message. I needed it when I was ten and my parents were going through an ugly divorce. But more than that, I needed to internalize the idea that someone like me could do things way bigger than they should have been able to so that when my life really fell apart a few years later it was in my arsenal.
I don’t know why I never owned National Velvet when I was a girl. I do now. I bought it at a thrift store when my oldest daughter was a little girl and I was building a library for her.
As I was writing this, I put on the 1944 adaptation starring Elizabeth Taylor (when she was twelve.) It’s still one of my favorite movies ever. I couldn’t find it streaming anywhere, but you can buy the DVD cheap.
Enid Bagnold wrote an autobigraphy that’s out of print, but pretty easy to find used. I’ve added it to my reading list. She had a quite interesting life. She grew up in Jamaica and went to art school in London. During World War I she was a nurse and then a driver in France. She
Today’s Poem:
The White Horse by David Herbert Lawrence
The youth walks up to the white horse, to put its halter on and the horse looks at him in silence. They are so silent, they are in another world.
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(DISCLAIMER: This post contains affiliate links.)
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.
