Storytime

My daughter and I have a ritual every night. We read a bedtime story together. Sometimes, she reads one page, and then I'll read the next. It's amazing to see how far she's come in her reading and I credit her progress to the wonderful Reading Recovery program that she did in first grade.

It's a special time together, one that I cherish, one that I hope will continue to give her a love of books. After all, that's how I became a writer. I loved books. I loved to go to the library and go through the stacks, trying to find just the right one. When I got older, I'd panic if I had only one book in my TBR pile and I'd have to beg my mom to go to the library again so I could stock up.

There's something powerful about books and stories, and there's something even more powerful about writing them. It's not easy. Sometimes it's hard, even painful. But when we as writers can give someone the ability to escape, to understand, to think, to enjoy...that's incredibly humbling.

Our words have the ability to speak to hundreds if not millions of people. Think of how many lives you can touch. Think of how you can enrich someone's life by your story, your article, your memoir, your novel. And then think back to how many books have enriched your own life in some way. My life has been blessed by so many wonderful stories - great novels, touching memoirs, enlightening histories, and the list goes on and on.

It's a great circle, this literary world. We read, we absorb; we write, we give back.

What an awesome responsibility.