The Books that Taught Me and The Story I've Waited Years For

This month, I've been participating in two different challenges. The #ABookTaughtMe challenge encourages me to share about the books that have taught me different things about life. The #WIPjoy challenge prompts me to share different aspects about my work in progress. If you've been following me on Twitter and Facebook, you know that I'm very inspired by these challenges and have been sharing every day. So I wanted to share some things that won't fit into a Tweet.

#ABOOKTaughtMe

The #ABookTaughtMe challenge has brought to mind so many wonderful books, books that I have enjoyed over and over and some that I have read only once. The challenge reminds me something that I think we forget: Books literally change people.

When I read the Redwall series, I was caught up in the drama of an everyday mouse becoming a great warrior who purged his land of evil rats and snakes and other creepies. I wanted Martin and Matthias's courage and loyalty and perseverance, and to return victorious to a home of simplicity and fellowship.

Then I read the Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander and I saw the price that warriors pay. There is a certain glory and nobility, but there is pain and loss and heartbreak too. There is the fight against the enemy and the fight against yourself. And you can never truly go back to the life you had before, because you have changed too much.

Those books helped me to understand heroism, each in their own way.

When I read the Queen's Thief series, I saw how people can intentionally misrepresent themselves, hide themselves from others so they will not be seen for what they are (either good or bad). I also saw how sometimes people don't even have to try to hide themselves; sometimes we see them only as we expect to see them, and miss the evidence that they could be something else. We blind ourselves from seeing others truly. It made me think about the ways we judge people and try to hide our true selves.

Tweet: Sometimes we see others only as we expect to see them & miss the evidence that they could be something else. - Yaasha Moriah

I can name book after book, some I liked and some I didn't, that all helped me to see life differently, to broaden my horizons, to recognize possibilities.

Books change us, for better or for worse. What sort of people do we want to become?
Click to Tweet this

#WIPjoy

This month, I've been sharing about my work-in-progress, for which the working title is "Rafe and the Ria Gate."

Every story is as different from the story before it as siblings are from each other. Same parents, but totally unique personalities. But when I say this story is different, I mean it's something special to me.

RAFE is the story that I've been wanting to write since I was a little girl.

Back then, I had a family of dolls that felt as real and personal to me as an actual family. Each doll had a name, a birthday, a special personality, definite talents and skills. I wanted to write a story that showed who they were, but every time I tried, it seemed cheesy and stupid.

I also wanted to write a sort of autobiography about my life growing up in Vermont with five siblings, of the snow-forts we made, the berries we picked, the mountains we hiked, the bonfires we built, the stupid petty arguments we worked out, and all the joys and roughness of rural living. But every time I tried, I got too wrapped up in the details and forgot the essence of the story.

Aaaaand I had about half a dozen different speculative fiction ideas that came to me over the years but seemed completely disjointed from any projects I had planned. I shoved them in the back of my mental vault. But I didn't forget them.

Sometime last year, the ideas began to coalesce into one wild, crazy idea. A story about a boy with a mysterious past, who comes to Vermont and begins a new life with a large family. Each person in the family would be based off of my dolls' personalities, and many of the events in my story would be fictionalized from my real-life experiences. Wrap it up with a sci-fi twist, and it's the story that incorporates everything I most enjoy.

I have never tried a project that incorporated so much of myself or so many different genres before.

But it feels right. It feels like the story that I was always meant to write.

​Here's a bit from the very beginning:

Rafe could not remember why he had run away, but he felt deeply that he was not, in fact, running away from home but to home. But that was ridiculous. No one ran to home, did they?

Still, that mysterious "somewhere," that other home, drew him invisibly. His bicycle sped along the road, until the houses became further and further apart, and the wind became stronger and pushed on his back as though thrusting him toward his mysterious destination. The trees crowded close together and soon he was zipping through kaleidoscopes of light and shade where the foliage above had broken the light.

His bicycle wheels hummed and the stiff breeze rippled over his close-cropped hair deliciously.

With a sudden surge of energy, he lifted his hands from the handlebars, spread them out, and screamed wordlessly into the wind.

Why was he so happy? He had no idea.

The dense forest of trees that lined the winding road gave way to broad fields of waving grasses and rolling hills, against a backdrop of misty blue mountains.

Suddenly Rafe screeched to a halt, his wheels skidding in the dirt at the edge of the country road. The road that broke away to the left seemed right, somehow. He turned on to it.

Some time later, he saw it--a farm-house set back from the road, its shape irregular with numerous additions, its roof shingles ragged and its red front door ajar. Half-under the shade of a maple tree, a game of Capture the Flag was in full swing amongst a group of kids about Rafe's age. Rafe stopped his bicycle and straddled it, leaning on the handlebars to watch.

"Jen, come and join us!" One of the boys--the dirtiest, Rafe noticed--called to a freckle-faced girl who sat on the front step with a brown-skinned girl.

"I told you already," replied Jen, glancing up from the notebook spread across her lap. "Jillene and I are making a writer's club."

"But we're short!" the dirty boy called.

"Then just grow a few inches," said a boy on the opposite team with white-blond hair and glasses. Everyone laughed, including Rafe. Hearing Rafe, the dirty boy looked round and spied the newcomer on his bicycle.

"You!" He called. "Come on and help us out."

The others looked at Rafe expectantly and, suddenly, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to walk his bike across the grass, to lean it against the tree, and to kick his shoes off to walk barefoot like the other children.

"I'm Sam the Savage," said the dirty boy, extending a sweaty hand. "You?"
​
"Rafe, the...uh..."

"Sweet name! It's like a rapper's name. Rafe the Rad. I like it. 'Yo, my name is Rafe, and it's a pretty rad name. Better watch yo' backs, 'cause I'm a boss at dis game.'"

"'And I'm sorry I'm on your team, 'cause your rhymes are so lame,'" added the pale-haired boy, with a wide grin. Everyone guffawed and Sam's teammates nudged him.

"Ready to get whooped?" Sam shouted back. It took Rafe only a moment to realize that the invisible boundary extended from the front and back doors of the farmhouse. It had been a long time since Rafe had played Capture the Flag—actually, he couldn’t remember ever playing the game, though he understood the rules. Even so, he proved himself within the first assault on enemy territory, zipping past defenders, feinting to one side, then dashing to the other. Soon Rafe's teammates were high-fiving him and casting good-natured jibes over the invisible boundary.

Sam's team still lost, but nobody seemed to mind.

“You’re not Rafe the Rad anymore,” Sam said. “You’re Rafe the Rugged!”
​
And he gave Rafe a very sweaty and stinky bro-hug.

In a way, I think the stories that teach us and the stories that we share are connected. RAFE would not have been possible without my experiences, true, but it also would not have been possible without The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia and the Westmark Trilogy and The Queen's Thief Series and A Wrinkle in Time series and too many others to name.

I had to see myself and life through the lens of other stories before I could understand which story was truly my own. (Click to tweet this)

Your Turn

What book taught you something important about life?

What story have you felt you always wanted to share with others?

Tell me all about it!