One of the things I love about books is that they’re not one-sided: they belong to the reader as much as the writer. The writer writes, the reader reads, and they are both artists in their own way.
It’s easy to think of writers as the sole creators of books, but it’s not accurate. The truth is, the readers are creators, too. When a person reads a book, they put themselves into it, their own mind, their own imagination. Their creativity is what fills in the blank spaces on the pages. In that way, reading is, in and of itself, an art form, and every reader has their own artistic liberty.
As a writer, that fact can be frustrating for me. It means that whatever I do, no matter how hard I try, no matter how clearly I express myself in my writing, I can never be sure that any reader will get out of it what I put into it. I can never be sure that anyone will ever really understand me. That can be daunting, but it is also magical. Because if somebody reads my story and gets something out of it that I never put into it, then where did that something come from?
That’s magic. That’s the magic of books, and it can only happen when a reader and a writer work together. Neither of them can do it alone.
Topic: The random thoughts thread. (Read 115685 times)
