No, I didn’t even want to be a reader! I declined to learn and ended up in what was then called “remedial reading” in elementary school. In middle school, I would take my glasses off during grammar lessons so whatever “rules” the teacher was writing on the board didn’t distract me from day-dreaming. Not recommended! It wasn’t until I found stories I loved that I realized books were a wonderful place to lose myself, to process my own feelings by following a character’s journey, and to belly laugh, gasp in horror, and cry my eyes out. Now I read a book or two a week and write two to three a year. My goal as a writer is to give my fellow readers the same joy books (eventually) gave me—to forget about our problems for a few hours and have a good time wondering how these characters are going to figure out their own messy lives.
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