My favorite author

I was around seven years old when I picked up the book that would become my first-ever favorite. The memory is so strong because it was also the first time I realized there were people out there who wrote books, worked as authors, and made a living by typing letters onto paper. True, I didn’t know back then that authors often had day jobs to support their artistic endeavors, but it was still the vivid realization that someone could be an author. I could be an author.

Because of that, the wonderful Robin Hobb became a huge part of my life. She inspired me with what a great character looked like and made me realize I could fulfill a dream I didn’t know I’d had all along. Her stories made me hope.

I hadn’t and still haven’t cared so much for the people in a book as I cared for the people in her books, and the skills of Robin Hobb’s craft were admirable even to me at that age. I could tell she was doing something different than other authors. I could tell she was making me feel different.

I wanted to write like her, fill pages with characters that other people would come to care about for real, and move a reader the way I felt her books had done for me. She taught me what great characterization looks like, and I strived to learn more from that age.

It’s still a learning process and always will be, but finding an author you admire, can, in turn, lead to one learning how to express one’s art.

The books by Robin Hobb aren’t just nostalgic to me. They are on my shelf because they give me hope and remind me of when I first picked up her book. When I realized I could be an author too.