The Year Of The Book

At Burning Soul Press, we believe that 2021 will be the return of the storyteller via books.

You know, the kind you can hold in your hand. The kind that has a sound all its own with the soft slip of a finger on paper and the crisp rattle of a turning page. It’s the sound of a promise being made, with more words to come, and a storyline to be fulfilled. Words drive stories, and souls drive words.

Our culture has been inundated with fifteen second video clips and endless scrolling as we wait for the next microcosmic high. In small doses this is entertaining, informational, possibly educating, and sometimes inspirational. But lately I’ve been disillusioned by the digital story. Quite honestly, it’s mind-numbing. It’s making us dumb. It’s cheapening our precious downtime. And it’s fooling us into believing that some things are more important than they really are.

It’s like willingly being tethered to a narcissist.

I believe we are waking up and realizing that there has to be more. And the good news is that there is and there was and there will be again. I mean who would fall down such a rabbit hole to begin with?

Me. I’m the white rabbit. Guilty.

But after years of allowing myself to be programmed by social media and culture, I long for something different, but familiar. I long for depth and meaning. I long for imagination and trailblazers. I long for things to stop being redefined and start being rediscovered. I long to get lost in a book. And not just one. I want to be a sponge again. I want to be surrounded by stacks of books. I want to give books as gifts. I want to visit the library. I want to go to the bookstore and get lost in a thriller while sipping an Americano. I want stories to insulate my heart from this wicked world. I want words to nourish me back to health. I want to get lost in the character’s life and learn from the narrator’s testimony.

What happened to the epic? What happened to the novel? What happened to the book? Where did the storytellers go? I’m talking about the writers, the ones who were perfectly okay being by themselves for hours with a pencil and notebook as a child. The ones who stare out a window not in depression or melancholy, but because they are somewhere else. They are within a story and watching it play out in their mind, making decisions and smiling randomly as their hero overcomes life’s obstacles.

Maybe that hero is them.

They are the ones who write better than they speak and have a collection of random notebooks filling up the nooks and crannies of their home. They are ones who inspire, teach, share, entertain and love. They are the ones who jot down character names on a post-it while they’re at work. They are the ones who created worlds in their sandboxes as children. They are the ones who create worlds on the written page today. They are the ones who have the lantern, and if you want to travel a different path, perhaps it’s time to see where they are going.

I can’t discredit modern culture completely. How else can a modern author share their work and get the word out to the public? Well, actually, there are plenty of ways, but that’s another post and we’ll get to that in time. I believe there is a place for social media and sound bites and the instant gratification of modern storytelling. I even enjoy a lot of it. But I do not think for one second that digital storytelling is the nourishing meat of life. It is but a sprinkle on a donut filled with empty calories compared to the novel, to the memoir, to the thriller, to the love story, to the adventure tale, to the autobiography, to the mystery.

And, there’s no egos, commercials or influencers to deal with. {!!!!!}

There’s just a promise that if you turn the page the story will continue to be told. And when it’s over, it’s on to the next one. And there are so many next ones to be discovered.

I am making a choice to spend more time reading books than on devices this year. And I am looking forward to guiding the first generation of Burning Soul Press Authors into publication.

If this article resonates with you… if you are that reader… if you are that writer… join us. One of our paths could be illuminated for you.

Lenora Henson is the Marketing Manager at Burning Soul Press. To learn more about our publishing and writing programs please visit www.burningsoulpress.com