Beyond a Love Affair: How I Went From Loving Books to Writing Them

Guest post by Becky Van Volkinburg

I've been in love with books my whole life. I love how they feel in my hands, how they smell (yes, I'm one of those people who gets some crazy high off of smelling book binding), and how they look lined up on shelves. When I was little I loved playing teacher and holding up one of my books between my pinky and thumb out to my side so that all my “students” could see the pictures while I read the story. I love wandering around a library or a book store and getting lost in the landscape of imagination.

Perhaps my love of books is also very closely tied to my love of words. I have always loved writing, whether it be poetry, short stories or my first attempts at a novel when I was in middle school. There has always been something magical about creating people and things and places and controlling it all. Nowhere else do you have that kind of power, except in your imagination. I remember my first semester in college in English 101, my very first writing assignment I chose to write about the night my father died. It was a simple paper, raw, with nothing held back. Just me and the most profound experience of my life on an 8-1/2 x 11 canvas.