Oh The Places You'll Go...

I've been reading quite a bit this week, minions. I wish I could read all the time, but I can't...not when I'm writing. (Reading puts my head in a different place than I need to be when I'm writing.) Some of the books have been good, some not so good. One was terrible, and another was a strange trip down memory lane, through a book I haven't read since I was in the sixth grade. It begged the question: didn't I read any YA as a preteen?

So I thought about it for a while, came up with a few titles, but no...most of what I'd read (and loved) was far more grown-up than I expected. I had a deep love of horror, even then. So my tastes tended toward the creepy, the bloody, the unexplained. It was early on in sixth grade that I first read Stephen King's Carrie. I remember closing that book and thinking, "That's what I want to do."

No, no, minions--I didn't intend to use my powers to destroy prom (that would come much later). I knew then that I wanted to be a writer. Which is silly, really, because I knew it before then. I'd always written, had always lost myself in this author's world or that...so I'm not sure why it took Mr. King to wedge that desire firmly in my mind. And how odd is it that now, when I go back and read Carrie, I really don't care for it. Carrie White is annoying, Sue Snell isn't trustworthy and frankly, I'm glad that certain people in the story die. But it was kindling for that spark of the need to write. And for that, I'm grateful.

But the reading will continue this week, as I'm still a few days away from allowing myself to write. Most of the mental cobwebs are cleared out now and I'm getting fidgety and anxious to dive back in. I love that feeling, that I-can't-wait-to-begin wave that washes over the tips of my toes and threatens to drag me into the tide. And it's coming...soon.