Bookworm

I started composing this essay in my head when Sean Taylor asked me to talk about reading as the genesis of writing for his site, Bad Girls Good Guys and Two-Fisted Action. There are these writers, you see, people who insist they don’t read or don’t have time to read or don’t really see the value of reading, and yet they allegedly write books.

The cynic in me wants to say they are the “writers” that snag an AI to do the work for them, because they are more interested in being lauded as a writer and getting the attention that comes with publishing a book than actually writing and publishing a book. Chuck Wendig wrote a great dissection of this concept as the Fetishization of the Idea, as if every human being doesn’t have random story ideas crossing their minds as they stand in line at the pharmacy or wait for the red light to turn green. I truly believe this: we all have ideas.

But writers sit down and turn ideas into stories. Writers. Not robots. And in order to do that, you need to read. The machine needs fuel.

I learned to read when I was three years old, or so I am told by my mother. She said we were in the grocery store and curly-headed three-year-old me read “EXIT” on the sign over the door. I have no memory of this, but my mother is presumably a reliable source.

Sean asked if anyone read to me, and I don’t have strong memories of this either, but it must have happened for me to be able to put E X I and T together to form a word I knew. My earliest associated memory of reading is sitting next to my mother in her bed and reading a Berenstein Bear book to her. This would have to have been before age six, if I remember the house correctly. We moved a lot.

Partway through the adventures of Brother and Sister Bear, my mother stopped me and summoned my father. I was surprised, and wondered if I’d done something wrong. Instead, my mother asked my father to please get her box of Nancy Drew books from the attic.

They were her own books from her childhood, those older 1950s blue tweed covers with the silhouette of Nancy and her magnifying glass (a device I do not recall appearing in the books). Mom had realized that at whatever age I was, I was ready for chapter books. I dove into Nancy Drew and never looked back.

From there I discovered Judy Blume, Black Beauty and The Black Stallion, fought beside Johnny Tremain, explored The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, climbed My Side of the Mountain and briefly attended…