I'm also quite superstitious and do believe in the distinct possibility of certain supernatural phenomena...
Ghosts. I'm saying I believe in ghosts.
Anyway, personal beliefs aside, there was one sentence in the quotes provided in the article that struck me mute a moment.
We have the power to create life, and to show those lives wonder.
That's what writing is to me. It's creating a sense of wonder.
Remember when you were a kid, and the world was full of wonder? When I was a child, I was encouraged to use my imagination. To that end, there were faeries living in our garden. I was a moon child, sent to hide one earth because there was an epic battle raging back home, trees had thoughts, and magic was real. Sadly, as I grew I lost this sense of wonder in the world around me. Pressure to "grow up" meant abandoning all ideas of magic and possibility, and that left the world looking a little more dull, and little less wonderful, and so much more difficult to bear.
I rediscovered that sense of wonder in books. My heart thrilled as I turned the pages and fell exciting tales of good versus evil. The dreary, hard, upsetting real world faded away. That thrill, that sense of wonderment, is part of what I love about reading so very much.
I've mentioned it before, but reading saved my life. It taught me a whole lot about the goodness in humanity when all I could see was the worst.
It has taken a long, long time to come around after shutting myself away from all the hurts I experienced as a young girl. There's been a lot of unravelling of biases and undoing of automatic defence mechanisms. Slowly, oh so slowly, I have been regaining my childlike sense of wonder. I'm starting to feel like anything truly is possible.
Books, both reading and writing them, have helped with this. My writer's mind hears words whispered in the leaves; trees speaking to one another with the aid of the wind. It sees dancers in the clouds as they scuttle past the sun on a cool autumn day. My writer's mind knows that there are spirits walking beside me.
None of that is, objectively, real, but it doesn't have to be. The beauty of imagination is that the mere possibility that it could be real is enough to spark that thrill, that sense of wonder.
It is my life goal to impart the same thing to anyone who may pick up one of my books. Writing does this. Writing fills the world with wonder again.
This is my purpose, in an objectively pointless existence. It's what makes my living at this point in time worthwhile.
That, and the knowledge that I will haunt you all when I die. MWAH HAH HAH HAH HAH!
Ciao!