An Extraordinary Gift

Yesterday, I received an extraordinary gift from A.

A is a similar age to Squidgeling T, and I’ve known them for a while (their mum was a guider when I was). A has - among other creative pursuits - a love of writing, and we recently went on a day’s writing workshop together. Afterwards, we agreed to have a catch up every now and again to see how each of us were doing on the writing front, because I was struggling to get back into writing and they were finding writing quite lonely. I guess you could say we ‘buddied up’.

We met yesterday - and A bought me an unexpected gift. It was heavy, and very solid. Bookish, maybe? I opened one end of the wrapping, and saw this;

Ooh, I thought, some notebooks! How lovely. Then I pulled the paper back a bit more and saw my name on the front cover of one of them. Personalised notebooks?

Then I realised what I was actually looking at: The Chronicles of Issraya - all five books - in customised hardback.

To say I was gobsmacked is an understatement. I could barely stammer out my thanks. I think the conversation went something along the lines of ‘Oh! What? How? Oh my!’ There were a few tears, hugs, and much ‘oh!’-ing over the next few minutes as the reality of what I had been given sank into my brain.

Basically, A has tried their hand at a new hobby: bookbinding. But because A (and their mum) love the Tilda stories, they decided that their first project would be to bind the Chronicles as a gift for me.

As a creative person myself, I know and appreciate how much work has gone into making these books. There are so many touches of brilliance in the design of the covers and how carefully they’ve been executed. The more I looked, the more I saw, and everything - I mean EVERYTHING - had been chosen to represent something of Tilda’s journey and key moments from the individual stories.

Everything is colour coordinated according to the colour of the region Tilda visits in each story, with the base colour dark grey to represent the Ringstone, and holographic silver on the spine for the silviron rings. Take a look at some of the details on the covers - see if you can spot which elements that are integral to that book that A has featured (I’ll list them at the end of this post in case you can’t figure any out!) Some are harder to determine from photos because the coloured overlay is reflective in some lights, which made photographing them a bit difficult, but A’s eye for detail is incredible.

Even the end papers and bookmark ribbons match!

It is such a very special and unique gift, and you can be certain I will treasure them.

We also talked a lot about writing - once I’d got over the shock of such an amazing gift! - and I hope, in some small way, I was able to gift something back to A.

They were talking about the project they’d been working on for a good number of years and now felt torn about, because the story they had set out to tell initially had changed over time and as they developed as a writer. They were beginning to feel drawn to a particular character who had a much more interesting story to tell than the current MC.

But - and this is why I always try to offer advice in the form of suggestions rather than a ‘how to’ list - A had attended a workshop where the facilitator had impressed upon the teenagers attending that they HAD to finish a story because if you got stuck at point X in one story and moved onto something new instead, you’d always get stuck at the same point in any future projects. This had stuck with A and they were trying to force themselves to finish what they had begun, when their enthusiasm was for the story this side character could be telling instead.

I told A that I thought this particular bit of advice was pretty rubbish - and very unfair to throw at emerging writers. I shared that I have several half-written stories, even now, that I got stuck on and set aside. I’ve written plenty of novels since - finished them, and got them published. The thing is not to treat that stoppage as something to be feared or to be ashamed of. Recognise that you still learnt a lot from the story that you stopped writing. You may well go back to it in the future, perhaps when you’ve developed the necessary skills to be able to assess and address the thing that stopped you writing beyond that particular point. Perhaps you’ll go back to it when you have the time and mental energy to devote to writing. You might never actually touch it again. But the main thing is to give yourself the permission to stop if that’s what you need to do. Stopping that single project doesn’t mean you have to stop writing altogether!

I kind of got the impression that by saying this to A, I’d given them a gift - of a sort. I could see the cogs whirring in A’s head, and by the time we finished our time together, they admitted that they had needed to hear that they could stop this particular project and not feel guilty. Hopefully, the next time we meet up, A will have mapped out the story they are excited to take this side character - who will now be promoted to a main character - on, within the world that’s been years in the creating of. And when it IS written, it will benefit both from everything A’s learned about themselves as a writer and everything they’ve learnt about life, too. Exciting times!

But right now, I’m off to clear a bit of shelf space so I can gaze upon my very unique books…and look forward to a time when A will be able to bind their own stories for their bookshelf, and I’ll have a copy of their book sitting on my shelf.

Here’s what you can see on the covers! #1 - the Ambakian mountains with the river running through them, Ambak berry branches and bushes, the eagle. #2 - the entrance to the mine, various gemstones. #3 - the Hanging Rock, entrance to the tombs, skull. #4 - a dragon’s tail visible in a field of wheat, apples. #5 - Ring Isle, the Silver Fish, a circle…