From the Reader to the Writer by Tara Elad

Thank you, Stranger.

You have taken me on a wonderful journey, masterfully wrought by a true wordsmith. You have held my hand in the pathways of your plot, you set up traps for me and I fall for them with satisfaction. You built breathtaking cities and awestriking vistas, with just 26 letters rearranged in different sequences across a page.

You don’t know, but you have written this for me, and me alone. We were together when you didn’t even know it, maybe even years after you wrote what I read. Maybe decades. One day, centuries.

You slaved for hours over the grainy paper, the flickering screen, your ticking typewriter. Never really knowing if what you wrote would reach me, would sink a hook into my soul and pull until I’m moved. It did. It will.

It swept me up along, upon a thing of magic. Into a realm unknown. It penetrated through to project your images right across the landscape of my mind.

You, who writes for your drawer and never publishes. You, who wrote a book forgotten by the shiny shelves of retail. You, who twitters to his fans via an eager intern, under a thumbnail of your latest cover. I am your reader. I am the point of the exercise. I am who you toil for.
I became one with you for just a single instance, inhabited your mind and walked mile in your shows. I, who allowed your words to weave their pictures, to speak their truths. I am who you write for.

I will always cherish you. I will bring life to your creation. I will synth flesh and blood and bones for all your characters and paint the sky red with your explosions. I will cry for the lost ones, rejoice for the winners and fear for the forsaken. I will hate for you, will love for you, I will laugh at your jokes and wish death upon our enemies. I’ll even suffer through pages of interior and fabric descriptions, and read the words “He says” a million times, for you.

Thank you, stranger whom I know so well. Thank you, partner in crime, lover, dark lord, prisoner and jailer. Thank you for being brave enough to write. To bleed all this out in physical form for me to hold and consume. For naming the creatures hiding in the dark for the sake of those of us who do not see as sharply.

Do not despair. Do not give up. Keep writing.
Yours, Reader.