Isn’t it ironic that my last post was about the risk of burn out and here, in the new year, I’m already feeling burned out?

I keep hearing that Bee Gee’s song Words in my head:

It’s only words

And words are all I have

To take your heart away…

If you think about it, that’s all a book is, a bunch of words.

The aim for any writer worth their salt is to turn that mass collection of words into some sort of emotional experience, that can transcend the page.

And yet how many of the books we read really stay with us?

Had an interesting experience the other day.

Went to fill some prescriptions and the girl at the checkout counter looked at me funny and asked if I was ‘that author’. (She was a young girl, in her early twenties, and apparently I’d visited her school in the last ten years or so.)

I said, yes, I’m an author.

Then she lit up and said, “You came to my school! You signed my book!”

I said, “Which book was that?”

And she said, “Wanting Mor.”

Then she looked pensive as she put one of my items into the bag and said, “It’s the best book I ever read.”

Wow. Subhan Allah.

To be the author of anyone’s ‘best book’ is truly such an honor!

Of course it made my day. But I hesitated posting this because it just feels so braggy and I’m really starting to despise the bragginess of social media! And I’m incredibly tired of my twitter feed containing all these promotional elements of the books people are peddling!

But that’s not my intention.

My thoughts are about how very hard it is to pour your heart out onto the page, hoping the words will resonate with someone enough that they can forget they’re actually just reading words on a page, but instead almost deceive them into believing they’re the person in the story and it’s all happening to them.

Does that make sense?

Because in the end really, they’re only words, and words are all we have, to take your heart away.

*sigh*