Five year’s ago over Labor Day weekend, I had something snap and reset me.  Growing up I was a reader.  I read constantly.  The younger years were spent reading biography’s of great American figures.  Then came middle school and on average I read about ten Babysitter Club books a week and I threw in a couple Nancy Drew’s for good measure.  Then comes junior high where I met VC Andrews then moved onto Danielle Steel.  Danielle opened my eyes to the presence of sex in books.  Then there was Stephen King and Anne Rice in high school.  Then of course the required reading, To Kill A Mocking Bird.

There were several years where I didn’t read as much.  I read the occasional classic and met Catcher In The Rye and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.  Then for a few years I only read non fiction books about child rearing and spirituality.  But, then a good friend told me I had to read the Twilight Series.  Yes, the Twilight series.  I devoured the entire series in four days.  I forgot to eat, had very little sleep, and I remembered why I loved books.   That series, though I know it is not a literary masterpiece, I will forever be thankful for because it re-awakened a long lost love of mine.  It reminded me of why I love to read.  I like to feel things.  Do you want to know the one part of those books that still remain with me?  The part in, I believe it was New Moon, where she just had several blank pages with just months listed. Those are the parts that stuck with me because I had just lost someone.  And in those few pages, she managed to put onto blank paper what loss feels like.  After reading those and feeling what it made me feel on those few pages, I wanted more.  I remembered why I loved books.  They connect us to each other, because for a little while we see things through another person (character’s) eyes and know that someone else feels things too.

I had an insatiable addiction and began reading non stop again.   I loved words.  I love quotes.  Hours were spent on Goodreads looking through the massive amount of quotes on there.  I started reading the classics again and so many others. It didn’t matter the genre, if the story captured me I read it. I have read so many books since 2008 and I am thankful for each and every one of them, because it was due to those books that I began to remember another love of mine–writing.

I found it amazing that this Labor Day weekend, I wrote over 22,000 words in my novel.  As I finished up for Sunday night, I realized it was five years to the weekend that my journey had began.  So, thank you Stephenie Meyer.  You encouraged me to realize that I too can write, because all you have to do is sit at the computer and let your mind flow.

Speaking of my novel.  Here is just a little tidbit about my main character in my dystopian novel.  This song is “her” song.