Lemony Snicket, source of inspiration (and childhood nightmares)
“Mr. Snicket rarely appears in public, but when he does, it is best to avoid him.”
Lemony Snicket is brilliant. And I don’t just mean his quirky writing. I mean he himself is brilliant, a mysterious and morbid genius in the guise of a man. So for your viewing pleasure, I have included a link to Snicket’s pep talk for a previous National Novel Writers Month. If this doesn’t cause you to pick up your pen and dash off a few inspired pages of that autobiography you’ve been wanting to start, then nothing will.
Also, for the morbidly curious, I’ve included a link to the information page on the author’s own website.
A thin blue vein pulsed in the collecting pool of blood where a bullet had lodged deep in the boy’s back. Hailu was sweating under the heat from the bright operating room lights. There was pressure behind his eyes. He leaned his head to one side and a nurse’s ready hand wiped sweat from his brow. He looked back at his scalpel, the shimmering blood and torn tissues, and tried to imagine the fervor that had led this boy to believe he was stronger than Emperor Haile Selassie’s highly trained police.
This boy had come in shivering and soaked in his own blood, in the latest American-style jeans with wide legs, and now he wasn’t moving. His mother’s screams hadn’t stopped. Hailu could still hear her just beyond those doors, standing in the hallway. More doors led outside to an ongoing struggle between students and police. Soon, more injured students would fill the emergency rooms and this work would begin all over again. How old was this boy?
excerpt from Beneath the Lion’s Gaze by Maaza Mengiste
This boy had come in shivering and soaked in his own blood, in the latest American-style jeans with wide legs, and now he wasn’t moving. His mother’s screams hadn’t stopped. Hailu could still hear her just beyond those doors, standing in the hallway. More doors led outside to an ongoing struggle between students and police. Soon, more injured students would fill the emergency rooms and this work would begin all over again. How old was this boy?
excerpt from Beneath the Lion’s Gaze by Maaza Mengiste
