I read because…

I read because I’ve always read.

I learned to read before beginning first grade, and although I hated the learning process, as soon as I finished, I was addicted. I read constantly. I read because I love stories — growing up, I was that child who begged her parents for stories constantly. I liked to immerse myself in foreign worlds and alternate lives, pretending I was friends with my favorite characters.

Our home growing up was a 200-square-meter apartment in Italy with squeaky floors. When I used to get too involved in a story, I would pace up and down, driving my parents (and the people beneath us) absolutely insane with the constant creaking and squeaking.

Reading is such an important thing. It can take you into all sorts of different dimensions and families, giving you friends you never would have dreamed of before, taking you to worlds you couldn’t have imagined on your own. I’ve been in Tudor England with Queen Elizabeth, primitive Egypt, the wilds of the Amazon and pioneering America. I’ve been everywhere at all times and with all sorts of people. I’ve learned much of what I know about the world from reading.

I used to read hundreds of books every year. Mostly Christian fiction, my bread and butter, but also the Babysitter’s Club and various other children’s books. Some of the first books I became obsessed with were the Christian Heritage books by Nancy Rue, which took me into history and gave me specific characters to hold onto and love. They inspired not only a love for stories, but also one for history and storytelling.

And that’s the most important thing reading has given me, and the biggest reason I read: I read because I write.

I read because reading is what inspired writing, and writing is my soul.

Writing is what helps me process life, what keeps me going when the times are hard, and it’s how I plan to make my living.

Without reading, there would be no writing. If I had never been forced to learn the art of “Joe runs up a hill,” or whatever those silly reading-primer books, say, I would never have been published by Seventeen or Good Housekeeping magazines. I wouldn’t have finished two novels and written essays that I’m hoping to get published elsewhere.

Reading is the purpose of writing. Without readers, writers would just be crazy people shouting into a void.

I don’t want to be a crazy person. I want to be a writer. And so, I read.