"Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon," -E. L. Doctorow
A little Christmas present for all my readers. <3
Olivia J, The WordShaker.
Why, you may ask?
The 'Olivia J' part is because that's my name. Olivia is my first name, J is my middle initial - pretty self explanatory.
'The WordShaker' is an allusion to one of my many favorite books: The Book Thief, which is about a foster girl who is taken in by this old couple in World War II Germany - and she steals books. The background part of is that Max, the Jew the Liesel Meminger and her family are hiding wrote her a small story.
The synopsis is this: Essentially, Hitler - described has having a small, odd mustache and wanting to rule the world - decided that he would do it with words. Not with brute force or guns, but with words.
These words are personified as literal seeds, and he goes around planting these seeds and they grow into trees of his words. 'Farmed thoughts', the book even says. When the word trees were spread throughout the country, he would give certain ones to certain people, along with special symbols.
After a while, there were so many trees with words on them that people had to be hired to maintain them - these people were called Word Shakers. And the best wordshakers were the ones who understood the power of words and knew how to use them. One of these monumental wordshakers was a small, skinny girl - AKA, Liesel, if you didn't get that already - and she was hailed the best wordshaker because "she knew how powerful a person could be WITHOUT words". This is the reason why she was the best and collected the most words and climbed the highest.
From a tear of love and friendship, a seed was born, unlike the ones administered by Hitler, and amidst the other trees, she planted this one. And this tree grew faster and much more wonderful than all of the other trees, and everyone knew that Hitler would come and have it ordered to be chopped down.
He did, and when they took her away from the tree, she screamed - 'You can't cut it down! Please!' But he ordered for his ax.
Then, the small wordshaker ran to the tree and climbed up in it's branches, and waited for it to fall. But the blade could not even make a mark in the tree. As one hundred and ninety six soldiers tried to hack away at the tree, stubborn and afraid, the wordshaker remained.
The people wondered how she survived up there, but what they didn't know is that the other world shakers would help her and throw her supplies.
Many days passed, and still the tree grew and the words multiplied, and when the last soldier finally gave up in trying to cut her tree down, he shouted "It's no use - you can come down now!"
But she said, "No, thank you."
But eventually, a beaten down, sad-looking ax-man came into town. He asked the people where the tree was, and they lead him to it. Instead of hacking away with his axe, he began to hammer nails into the tree and climb up to the branches.
The people thought he was insane, but he climbed higher anyway. When he reached the girl, he asked "Is it really you?"
And the wordshaker realized that it was from him that she got the seed that grew into this magnificent tree.
Eventually, they came down, and the moment that the wordshaker stepped foot into the dirt, the axe marks began to show, and the tree toppled over into the forrest. The world shoot as the forest cleared around this great tree, and even if the people could remove the tree entirely, there would always be a path in the evil forrest carved by the wordshaker's tree. And when the girl and the man emerged from the tree, they saw that the crowd that had been around the tree since it's inception were gone.
And the man and the wordshaker left, but every once in a while, they would stop to listen, because they swore they heart the whispers of words, still emanating from the wordshaker's tree.
*squeals in glee* Can't you just see why I love this story? I probably don't need to explain to you why I chose this for my penname, but then, why would you be here?
I chose this as my penname because I want to be a wordshaker. I want my words to have so much power that no one can take them away. I want my words to have so much power that they will live on after my death. Because my words are all I have to offer this world, so I must make the best of it. Because all my writing is is a reflection of my creator God, and what He has placed in me to glorify him and help others.
And I will end this by quoting NaNoWriMo's slogan:
"The world needs my story."
~The WordShaker
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