Kim Neville

Happy post-holidays. I hope all your bellies are sated and your jingles sufficiently jangled.

Every year I intend to write about my favourite books. And then I don’t. No more! This year, I’ve made a list. The best books I read in 2011.

I don’t read as much as I used to so my list is small. These are the books I make my friends read. The ones that inspire me to write harder because I want to be able to tell stories like that.They’re the books I still think about. The ones that changed me.

1) The Chaos Walking Trilogy by Patrick Ness

Okay, this is three books. But if you’re going to read the first one, you might as well buy all three. Otherwise you will be kicking yourself at the end of The Knife of Never Letting Go. Trust me. Disclaimer: I love dystopian YA fiction. This series is one of the best, in my opinion, right up there with The Hunger Games. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a great read and is cool with talking dogs, space colonies, alien life forms and a lot of guns. Fast-paced story, complex characters facing tough choices, a fascinating, unique world and crazy cliffhangers. Another huge plus: Ness has created one of my favourite female YA characters of all time. Viola!

2) Room by Emma Donaghue

As a writer I was keen to read this book because of its voice. The story is told from the point of view of a five year-old boy who’s spent his entire life locked in a small room with his mother. What a challenge to write a whole novel through the filter of a small child without sounding either overly precious or too sophisticated to be authentic.

Well, it worked for me. I believed in Jack completely. I can’t remember the last time a book literally made my heart pound and tied my stomach in knots. Maybe I felt especially connected to the story because I have a child the same age, but man, reading Room was emotionally harrowing. It’s a powerful story.

3) Delirium by Lauren Oliver

Yep, another dsytopian YA. Delirium follows the story of Lena, a girl who lives in a future America where there’s a cure for love — and everyone must receive it at the age of eighteen. Lena is terrified of contracting deliria (ie love) and can’t wait to be cured. It’s not a stretch to figure out where the story’s going to go from there. But Oliver does a wonderful job of drawing out Lena’s awakening. I was sucked in from page one. Gorgeous writing and an ever increasing sense of dread that kept me totally engrossed. I thought this book was beautiful and can’t wait for Pandemonium’s release in February.

See that book up there? I’ve had it for thirty years. It played a large role in my desire to write stories. Reading the Grimm Brothers versions of my favourite fairy tales was a revelation. Cinderella’s step-sisters cut off their own heels and toes to force their feet into that glass slipper? At Snow White’s wedding, the wicked queen was forced to dance in red-hot iron shoes until she was dead? Fairy tales were suddenly so much more violent and weird and disturbing and…cool.

If you’ve read any Grimm Brothers stories you know a lot of them are almost like summaries. There’s not a ton of description or character development, which leaves plenty of potential for interpretation and embellishment. I think one of the things I loved about reading those fairy tales was pondering all the questions they brought up for me. I wanted to know more, so my imagination would fill in the blanks.

Last week a couple of friends suggested a writing challenge. I promised I’d write a short story over the weekend. Knowing how much time I can waste mulling over story ideas, I decided to speed things up by trying something I’ve always wanted to do. I stole a plot from my big old fairy tale book and wrote an adaptation.

I learned a couple of interesting things from this exercise:

1) Writing from an outline didn’t kill the fun. In fact, I found there was plenty of room for play and discovery. Even though I knew all the important plot points, I enjoyed bringing the story to life. It was like adding organs, muscle, tissue and skin to a skeleton and then breathing spirit into it.

2) Writing a “meaningless” story for practice gave me creative freedom. I had no intentions for this story. There was no pressure for it to be good. Because of that, I wrote with confidence and it shows in the final product. It’s among my best short stories and it took me — by far — the least amount of time to write. It was a good reminder that I’m at my best when I’m having fun, and I should bring that attitude into all of my writing.

3) Putting my own spin on a favourite tale was personally satisfying. The story I chose was The Maiden Without Hands. I didn’t remember it when I picked up the book, but it was one of the ones I’d noted with two checkmarks in the Table of Contents, and as soon as I began reading it came back to me. What I love about that particular story is the maiden is a rebel. Her father is tricked into giving her away to a wizard, but she won’t go. Instead, she finds a way to save herself and then goes off to seek her own fortune. She’s not your typical fairytale maiden, and I like to think that’s what fascinated me about the story when I was a kid. (Probably, though, it was the gory stuff.) I named her Silver, and writing from her point of view was some fun. I felt like I tapped into my 8 year-old self for while, dreaming up answers to all those old questions. Did Silver really buy her dad’s story about being tricked by the wizard? What about after he cut off her hands? Did she believe him then?

After months of revising and now, weeks of planning and daydreaming, I haven’t done much actual writing of actual fiction lately. You know, laying down word after word until there’s a complete story on the page. I forgot how good it feels. So good I think I might steal another plot. What do you think: “The Nixie of the Mill-Pond” or “One-Eye, Two-Eyes and Three-Eyes”? Maybe both.