Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: birthday (05/23/05)
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TITLE: Birth of Imagination | Previous Challenge Entry
By Lori Gossert
05/30/05 -
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Having finished her sweet treat and still avoiding her assignment, she wandered back up the other side of the street. Many years and many interviews later she could still not pinpoint what it was that drew her into the old used bookstore. In fact, she nearly missed it altogether. The storefront was just a green wooden door and matching paned glass window. There was an old orange overstuffed chair in the window that had surely seen better days and a small blue table with lamp beside it. No bright advertising or big lettering to display the store’s name. Just an inviting chair in the window that begged her to pluck an old book off the shelves and sit and read awhile. Not really needing another excuse to delay the inevitable, but welcoming one anyway, she walked in. She browsed lazily for several minutes, barely even noticing the titles of the books as she walked up and down the narrow isles.
She found the book tucked away in a lonely corner in the very back of the store. It was old, one of those covered in material like they seldom make anymore amidst the economy of paperback. The book was small and the gold lettering had worn almost completely away. All that was left of the title and author was a ‘BIT’ and a “TOL.’ Threads were beginning to pop out on the edge of the book and the pages stuck together as she tried to leaf through them. The book appeared so lonely and neglected that she felt she must read it. She made her way to the front of the store and sat down in the orange overstuffed chair. The old musty smell calmed her senses and each page creaked as she turned it.
Before she knew what was happening, she had been whisked away to a small lush village in a far away land in a world that only existed in the mind of the author. She followed the main character on a grand adventure past his safe sheltered home and out into the wild unknown. She was captivated by the various creatures that she met along the way, all so vividly described that it was like they were right there in the bookstore with her.
The sun began to make its way down toward the horizon but she noticed nothing outside of the world of the book until the store owner came up to tell her that he was about to close. Not bearing to leave the journey while she was so close to the end, she gave the owner a few crumpled dollar bills from her pocket and returned to her studio apartment above the tailor shop. Plopping down on her bed and propping herself up by the elbows, she opened the book to see how the main character was going to get out of the mess he had once again found himself in. Before the sun set, she had completed the story.
But her own story was just beginning. Having been introduced into a whole new world by the musty old book, she sat down at her computer and began typing out her English composition assignment, a fiction story that was to take place somewhere that she had never been. Once dreading the assignment, she now wrote excitedly about other places and creatures and worlds.
Much later, after having several successful books published, an interviewer asked her what inspired her colorful characters and wonderful worlds. She pointed back to the worn novel and the old used bookstore. That day, she would always say, was the day her imagination was birthed. A day that spawned many more tomes. And when a small child or aspiring writer would ask her to recommend a book, she would always pull out that one, opening to the first page and reading aloud, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”
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