WEEK 1: Prologue

                I have always been an extensive reader. I’ve found that the older I get, the more I enjoy reading, often against most other forms of media – games, films, etc. The biggest thing, I think, that I enjoy about writing is the thought process of the author, or even the internal monologue of a character. There are things you can achieve in writing that you cannot do, or not do easily, with visual media, and the reflection of the author’s feelings and experiences echo out from the work, impacting the reader, often in a thoughtful way.

For many years now I’ve been reading mostly novels, of varying genres and quality. But I’ve also spent a great deal of time ready and studying history and mythology also. I think the written word is an amazing thing – one of the closest things we have to real magic. A book of history, though often one-sided, gives us a glimpse into our pasts. By interpreting small ink marks on a page we are transported to another time and place, learning from the triumphs and failure of our past. Mythology does much the same, save that it serves best to enhance our understanding of the psychology of a culture. By reading about gods, goddesses, heroes and monsters from all across the world, we are allowed a glimpse into a lost world of magic and mystery, before the advent of modern science.

 For me, this is one of the two areas where writing is most valuable – most rewarding. The second of the two comes in the form of novels. A powerful, well-crafted story, whether fiction or non-fiction, has the ability to move us in ways I feel no other media can. If the world fell into ruin, and a thousand years from now a person from some new culture found a miraculously preserved copy of some book, it would likely appear to them no more than a block of wood, or at least a curious object covered with nonsensical markings. In that way, the magic of the book’s “portal” is lost, and without a proper translation of the words within, the magic of the book is gone. That’s the power of a book, for those with the ability and willingness to read – they have the opportunity to be spirited away to another world, and the admission price does not involve electricity, only a bit of time, light, and an eager mind.