In our household, there are a few children’s series by
contemporary writers that are popular. We wait and wait and wait for the next
one to come out. “Mummy, why do we have to wait so long?” I love replying to
this. “Because the WRITER is WRITING the next book. It takes time to write a
book. It can take a long time. Sometimes it can take a year. Sometimes ten
years, or even more.” My kids are disappointed, but don’t say anything more. We
all go on waiting.
In my head, my answer to the question, “Why does it take so
long to write a book?” goes more like this: Because the WRITER is WRITING the
book! They don’t go to the toilet and collect what they have done in a specimen
jar and then give it to this cool COMPUTER, this unreal TECHNOLOGY, this
brilliant APP that makes excrement into AMAZING life-changing, thought
provoking, or even just well written and entertaining BOOKS! It just DOES NOT
HAPPEN THAT WAY. No. It’s usually not FAST and EASY and AVAILABLE just when you
want it – at the touch of a button, and the flick of a switch, at lightning
speed, in an instant, voila, no probs, too easy, there you go. NO!
So we keep waiting, and when we see or hear that the next
book in the series is out, we can get all excited and go to the bookshop and
buy it! Bookshop? Yeah! There’s one
left! We go there and buy it. Buy it?
Yeah! We hand over cold hard cash or our credit card and we think we are
getting A REALLY GOOD DEAL.
