For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated with bookstores and libraries.
First, I was enthralled as a reader. Look at all these stories! (I hadn’t yet found the excitement of nonfiction) This place, this library–you’re telling me all these books I can just…take? Go home, read them as many times as I want, bring ‘em back, and get more? I remember getting my first library card and feeling two contradictory things simultaneously: I remember feeling that getting a library card was just the natural thing to do: surely, everyone did this, right? This was just one of those Adult Things that one does, and now that I’ve done it, I’m a little bit closer to being an adult. But I also felt like I was enting some very exclusive club, that I held a membership card to some secret grotto where stories lived between brightly colored pasteboard covers.
Bookstores held a similar mystique, with the added idea that I could actually OWN these books–put them on my shelf and reach for them whenever I wanted. Books represented possibilities, and to go into a bookstore and see so many, so many…well. It was as if someone had told me, “don’t worry, Sean…you’ll never ever run out of things to read.”
Somewhere in my childhood, I thought about writing my own stories (I distinctly remember one of my primary school assignments–I think it was third grade–we were tasked with writing a Christmas story. I was so engrossed in this assignment that I asked my teacher for an extension so I could complete this opus. Later, in sixth grade, my wonderful teacher, Ms. Kraatz, had us write longer stories which she then taught us how to bind in a little book of our very own.
That was it, I think. That was the true beginning. I was hooked. I could go into a library and borrow a book whenever I wanted, or I could save up my allowance and go into a bookstore and buy a book and have it forever, sure. But now…I could WRITE MY OWN BOOKS!
Somewhere in there, during my preteen years, I started to dream. Of writing my own books. If having others read them and have the same magic bestowed upon them as I had on myself.
And of walking into a bookstore and seeing my name on the shelf.
Some dreams never happen, and that’s okay. Not everyone hits the game-winning home run in Game 7 of the World Series. Not everyone wins the Nobel Prize for their breakthrough discovery in cancer research. And not everyone thanks the Academy while accepting the award for Best Actor.
Me? I walked into my local Barnes and Noble and saw that little writer from almost fifty years ago achieve something he’s always wanted.
Be seeing you!
First, I was enthralled as a reader. Look at all these stories! (I hadn’t yet found the excitement of nonfiction) This place, this library–you’re telling me all these books I can just…take? Go home, read them as many times as I want, bring ‘em back, and get more? I remember getting my first library card and feeling two contradictory things simultaneously: I remember feeling that getting a library card was just the natural thing to do: surely, everyone did this, right? This was just one of those Adult Things that one does, and now that I’ve done it, I’m a little bit closer to being an adult. But I also felt like I was enting some very exclusive club, that I held a membership card to some secret grotto where stories lived between brightly colored pasteboard covers.
Bookstores held a similar mystique, with the added idea that I could actually OWN these books–put them on my shelf and reach for them whenever I wanted. Books represented possibilities, and to go into a bookstore and see so many, so many…well. It was as if someone had told me, “don’t worry, Sean…you’ll never ever run out of things to read.”
Somewhere in my childhood, I thought about writing my own stories (I distinctly remember one of my primary school assignments–I think it was third grade–we were tasked with writing a Christmas story. I was so engrossed in this assignment that I asked my teacher for an extension so I could complete this opus. Later, in sixth grade, my wonderful teacher, Ms. Kraatz, had us write longer stories which she then taught us how to bind in a little book of our very own.
That was it, I think. That was the true beginning. I was hooked. I could go into a library and borrow a book whenever I wanted, or I could save up my allowance and go into a bookstore and buy a book and have it forever, sure. But now…I could WRITE MY OWN BOOKS!
Somewhere in there, during my preteen years, I started to dream. Of writing my own books. If having others read them and have the same magic bestowed upon them as I had on myself.
And of walking into a bookstore and seeing my name on the shelf.
Some dreams never happen, and that’s okay. Not everyone hits the game-winning home run in Game 7 of the World Series. Not everyone wins the Nobel Prize for their breakthrough discovery in cancer research. And not everyone thanks the Academy while accepting the award for Best Actor.
Me? I walked into my local Barnes and Noble and saw that little writer from almost fifty years ago achieve something he’s always wanted.
Be seeing you!
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