Is it a Passion or a Joy to write? By Marian Lanouette

With me it’s both. From an early age, reading took me away to places I knew I’d never see and people I’d never get to meet.

As one of ten children raised in a five room apartment, reading provided an escape that to this day still whisks me away to faraway place; and introduces me to puzzles that need to be solved.   During my Clara Barton days I wanted to be a nurse. I fell in love with the Hardy Boys. Nancy Drew made me want to be a detective and on and on it went. If only for a few hours or a few days a week, I could be anyone I wanted to be, thanks to the magic of books.

My passion for reading grew as I grew, not only was I reading mysteries, I started reading autobiographies, human interest stories and the daily newspaper before I was seven. My thirst for knowledge expanded with my most precious gift—my library card. My imagination also grew and I started to express myself in poems and short stories. I never kept a diary but I did keep a journal of stories and poems.

As a child I went out of my way to keep the peace, so I held my thoughts and opinions to myself. Writing became very cathartic for me. Here on the pages in front of me I could vent, I could create and I could dream. Yes, I owned the worlds I created. And what worlds they were. I traveled the globe and saved the world or I met the handsome prince (I did years later and married him) and live-happily-ever after. If my imagination could create it—I could live it.

So I ask today, how did you get interested in reading and writing? And when did you put your first words on the paper?

That very day you became a writer.

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