the wonder of words

I love to read (shocking! not). I was definitely the kid that stayed up past my bedtime with a flashlight under a blanket to finish a good story. It never mattered how tired I was the next day. I'd do it again and again and again, the next time an amazing book sucked me in. Whether or not the book was about magic, stories are magic.

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic." - Carl Sagan

When you've finished a really really good book, what's the next thing you have to do? Talk about it with other people who loved it too, of course. Almost two years ago, I met my sister's friend (a fellow Sara!) at my nephew's first birthday party. It was our first time meeting, and we spent over an hour talking about Sarah J. Maas's Throne of Glass series that we'd both recently read. We talked and talked about our favorite characters and plot points and books in the series and how hard it was to start pronouncing CHAOL correctly. Our entire conversation flowed so easily.

And, how wild is that? Not only do words someone else wrote become visions in your mind, but those words take on a life of their own. The story becomes its own language. Connecting you to someone else because you read the same words. Because you felt the magic too.

I always wonder if writers know that their stories have these capabilities. To become something else. Or, if they're just writing the words, and letting us do the rest. Regardless, it's beyond cool. I hope someone, somewhere reads Luna's story one day, stays up too late, chats with a person they just met about it. And, if not, excuse me while I cry...kidding (kinda). But, truly, I loved writing her story, and look forward to continuing to write about Luna and Protectresses and the Silvis (and other stories too). Who knows what all those words will become.