My Lifelong Love of Books | DearReader.com Guest Article

When Someone Says, “Write About Anything,” Suddenly I Have Nothing to Say

I was recently invited to write a guest article for DearReader.com, and as an author and lifelong book lover, you’d think choosing a topic would be easy. After all, I could write about books, reading, Nancy Drew, writing, my slightly ridiculous shoe collection, or maybe even my love of crystals. But when someone gives you permission to write about anything, something funny happens suddenly, you have absolutely no idea what to write about.

You can read my guest column on DearReader.com.

And yes, I stared at those submission guidelines for longer than I care to admit.

The Assignment: Anything… Except That

The guidelines were wonderfully open-ended. I could write about writing, my favorite breakfast cereal, a childhood memory, whether I’m a cat or dog person, or pretty much anything else that came to mind.

There were just a few rules: no religion, no politics, no profanity, and one particularly interesting instruction: don’t write about how you got the idea for your book.

Well, there went the obvious author answer.

So there I sat thinking, Okay… what DO I write about?

My shoes?

My crystals?

My books?

Honestly, for a woman with my shoe collection, this was no small decision. But the books won.

“The stories we love have a funny way of becoming part of our own story.”

That idea kept coming back to me as I thought about what I genuinely wanted to share with DearReader readers.

I didn’t want to manufacture a clever topic simply because I needed one. I wanted to tell a story that felt like me.

And when I thought about the things that have been part of my life for as long as I can remember, the answer was sitting right there on my bookshelf.

Before I Was a Writer, I Was a Reader

I grew up without television for much of my childhood. Even after we finally got one, watching TV was mostly reserved for weekends.

That left a whole lot of time for something else.

Books.

I practically lived at the school library. When the bookmobile came to town, I’d load up again. And walking into Waldenbooks? That was my happy place.

If you remember Waldenbooks, you probably remember that feeling too. The smell of new books. Rows and rows of covers. The possibility that somewhere on one of those shelves was a story that could completely transport you.

For me, the mystery section was irresistible.

And then there was Nancy Drew.

Haunted mansions. Hidden staircases. Secret tunnels. Suspicious characters. Clues that absolutely had to mean something.

I was hooked.

Takeaway: Write About What You Can’t Stop Loving

Sometimes purposeful storytelling doesn’t begin with a profound message.

It begins with something you genuinely love.

If you’re struggling with what to write about, ask yourself: What could I talk about for twenty minutes without preparing? What instantly brings back a memory? What makes me light up?

Start there.

The Best Stories Grow Up with Us

My love for Nancy Drew didn’t end when childhood did.

Years later, when the Nancy Drew computer games came along, my daughter and I played them together. Then my nieces joined us. We hunted for clues, argued over suspects, got completely stuck, figured things out, and celebrated every solved mystery.

Those books had somehow traveled with me from one season of life into another.

Today, I don’t have quite as much time to help Nancy escape haunted houses or uncover secret passages.

So, I’ve graduated to Friday nights with Dateline and Keith Morrison.

Apparently, once a mystery girl, always a mystery girl.

And here’s the funny part.

I eventually co-authored a romance novel.

Yes. The girl who grew up solving Nancy Drew mysteries wrote a love story.

But maybe that isn’t as surprising as it sounds.

Books Take Us Farther Than We Realize

Books have always done something for me that even my favorite pair of shoes can’t do.

My shoes have certainly traveled with me. They’ve been packed into suitcases, walked city streets, and probably taken up more luggage space than they deserved.

But books? They’ve taken me places I could never pack for.

A few paragraphs can put me on a windswept cliff in Scotland or send me across the prairie with Laura Ingalls. A mystery can turn an ordinary bedroom into detective headquarters. A love story can make us remember what it feels like to hope.

Reading asks us to participate.

We imagine the voices. The rooms. The weather. The expressions on the characters’ faces. Two people can read exactly the same book and build slightly different worlds in their minds.

That’s still magical to me.

And somewhere along the way, all those years of reading taught me something about storytelling too: the stories that stay with us aren’t necessarily the loudest ones. They’re the ones that make us feel something.

So, What Do You Write About?

That was the question I started with.

Shoes? Crystals? Books?

In the end, I realized I didn’t need to come up with the most impressive topic. I needed to write about something true.

For me, that was books.

Books were there when I was the kid waiting for the bookmobile. They were there in the aisles of Waldenbooks. They were there when Nancy Drew made me believe every mystery had an answer. They were there when my daughter, my nieces, and I gathered around a computer searching for clues.

And eventually, books led me to become part of the storytelling myself.

So yes, if my house were on fire, Apparently, there is something I love more than shoes.” Because I’d be heading for the books.

Especially those yellow Nancy Drew covers.

You can read my guest article on DearReader.com and see how my lifelong obsession with books made its way onto the page.

If you could save only one, what are you grabbing first: the shoes, the crystals, or the books?