Alright, so I graduated in 2014 and the textbooks aren’t that old. Still, I did graduate (cum laude, thank you very much) and I haven’t touched them since. In fact, the whole school thing feels very distant to me now.
Did I really manage to go to school for three straight years, no summer breaks, all while holding down a full-time job, caring for my child as a single parent, and somehow finding the time to write?
How in blazes did I do that?
I must be a superhero, seriously. Or I had divine Grace on my side.
It’s probably divine Grace.
Anyway, I decided to pick up one of the old history books this week and start re-reading it, this time for fun.
Yes, reading a textbook can be fun. And in this case, it was both fun AND inspiring. While reading The Heritage of World Civilizations, I stumbled over one sentence that threw my creative muse into a whirlwind.
It was about plastered skulls as memorial art in the Neolithic Period and I decided I had to use that somewhere. It has become a detail I’ll be putting in Swans (the Fantasy I’ve been working on) and with a little brainstorming with a very handsome and intelligent man, I have sealed it into the outline.
One line in a history book and suddenly I have a really cool, fun detail and sequence of events to follow through my novel.
Old textbooks are fun. Really. If you have some lingering at home you should pick one up. I’m not sure how Accounting 101 or Trigonometry might help in a novel, but I have every faith in your creative powers. There might be something in there you can use, you just have to take the time to look.
AJMaguire 