“Literature duplicates the experience of living in a way that nothing else can, drawing you so fully into another life that you temporarily forget you have one of your own. That is why you read it, and might even set up in bed till dawn throwing your whole tomorrow out of whack simply to find out what happens to some people who ~ you know perfectly well ~ are made up.” Barbara Kingsolver

Okay, I’ve said it – I admit it: Go away I’m reading! And the truly ironic part is that I was in the middle of Jane Eyre, a book I’ve read at least five times. I was at the part where Jane is abandoned, cold, starving. I know she’ll be rescued and cared for and get to have this amazing Christmas with long lost cousins, Mary, Diana and St. John Rivers [how do you say his name?] and eventually put on a path back to Mr. Rochester where she belongs. I know this because I’ve read it before – five times.

And yet I still told my daughter, who had interrupted my reading, she had to go away so I could find out what happens to poor Jane. Why did I do that?

I did it because the story had captured me and I believed it. I believed in a setting so vivid and rich I could smell it, characters so vulnerable and human they were as real as the daughter standing before me rolling her eyes [she knew about the five times], and situations so compelling they evoked my deepest emotions; I always cry. Like Ms. Kingsolver confesses, we will ruin our tomorrow – or irritate our daughter – to know what happens next [apparently, in my case, even when we know full well what happens next].

This is the magic of good writing, and what this blog will explore. Thanks for joining me.