Book ARE real.

Has anyone ever told you, "Books aren't real life." Inside books, we can see the world. Never forget that. The stories books hold are dramatized, true, but inside each of them we are able to witness feelings, emotions, triumphs, and mistakes of characters. Characters who, throughout the course of the story, may have gone through years of their lives, endless amounts of torture or happiness. And we witness those happenings. As readers, we so often connect with a character so much that the events of the story become less important than the emotions both we and the characters take away. So, even though a character may be in a fictional, fantastic setting doing something wild and unrealistic, their emotions ring true. And understand why or how someone feels a certain way provides us empathy, a tool we then use more frequently every single day to understand the real lives around us. True, characters and their stories are fictionalized pieces of imagination created by an author, but even understanding what we're reading was written by another human gives us so much insight into the lives of his or her characters, those moral lessons, both on and off the page. Everything about books and stories and characters, from fantasy to romance, is so saturated in humanity it's impossible not to learn and grow and find a new piece, a new view of life inside each one. Unless you choose to not look, not believe in the very real magic of stories. Unless you choose to believe that something written on a page is not capable of changing lives, shaping hearts, and opening eyes. You, nonbeliever, exist. And I hope you, one day, let the magic take you as it has taken me. Because life is so much happier, richer, and more understanding on this side of the page. #AmWriting