I grew up being the type of bookish nerd who wouldn’t eat dinner until I had a battered, well-read paperback or a freshly checked-out library book propped against my plate. I would stay up until the wee hours of the morning, devouring as many words as I could. My mom even grounded me from pleasure reading once because my grades were slipping. But somewhere along the way, I became distracted by social media, Netflix, and trying to write my own words, and I lost my love of reading.
Well, I guess I can’t say I LOST my love of it, because I stil inhaled books by my favorite authors the day they hit the shelves—but it just didn’t have the same spark that it used to. Maybe it was because Writer Stefanie started to internally edit every book I read, or maybe I felt the very strong doubt of Imposter Syndrome, which made my own work (which was beginning to be rejected by more literary agents than I’d like to admit) feel dull and lifeless.
But recently, I regained that love of reading that I first found so long ago. I’ve been devouring as many books as I can, and I can’t seem to get enough. In fact, I’ve read three 300 page books in the last 72 hours. It’s like I am trying to catch up on all those years of only reading two or three books here and there. And thankfully, I no longer feel like it’s making my own words less shiny—I actually feel the opposite. Reading every day again has begun to refill my creativity well, which I’ll admit was getting a bit dusty from the sting of rejection.
Thank you, writers, for creating worlds for us to escape to, especially in light of our current political situation. Books make the hard days a little easier to bear, and even if I never get traditionally published like I’ve always dreamed, I’m glad that I get to be a part of that group of dreamers.
“They say that dreaming is free, but I wouldn’t care what it cost me.” -Paramore, “26”
