The Divining Wand

What a day — or another week — for a daydream, lazing in the summer heat of July. In fact it feels like the perfect time to wonder “what if” The Divining Wand possessed magical powers and could grant authors, who create their own magic with “what if,” the following two questions:

Based only on their writing, what author would you want to be?

AND

If given the opportunity to have written ONE book in your lifetime, what would that title be?

~ Allison Winn Scotch (The One That I Want, Time of My Life, and The Department of Lost and Found):

“Oh gosh, impossible to say! Of course, I want to choose someone whom I deem to be genius, but then again, I have no idea what sort of personal happiness he or she has achieved. For me, it’s all about finding this balance, and since I really don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes of some writers – some of whom I think are so brilliant but whom I also suspect are a little bit tortured – I really can’t choose! I know you said based only on their writing, but some of that writing comes from a dark place.”

“Oh boy, again, I know I should choose something like Jane Eyre or The Sun Also Rises, but I’m going to say Then We Came to The End by Joshua Ferris. I read a lot of books that I think are wonderful but that I also think that maybe, if I’d come up with that specific idea and had a great writing day, that I could create something similar. (And I don’t mean that narcissistically, or to any way take away from other writers: I just think – and I’m sure that a lot of other writers thinks this too – that many of my peers write similar things to what I write, so blessed with a magic wand, we might all be able to do what the other does…within reason, of course!) But with his book, I was just TOTALLY blown away. I really don’t think that even on my best day, I could have conceived of the book in the way that he did, much less written it in the style that he did. He made me a fan for life, and I have total appreciation for the genius of that book.”