Why Settle for a Vowel When You Can Buy the Whole Book?

"If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all: read a lot and write a lot.

There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut."

~~Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Long before I read King's words, I had embraced his philosophy. I had, in fact, embraced it in a way that may have occasionally appeared compulsive to the people around me. Those compulsions are more pronounced now than ever.

Here's the bookshelf above my writing desk. There is another row of books just as long on the connecting wall, but sunlight prohibited me from getting a shot of those.

These are the books on the shelf in my writing desk:

These are the books in a stack on my writing desk:

These are some books I currently have checked out of the library:

These are the books (and a magazine) that are on my nightstand at the moment:

For years, my book obsession had to take a backseat--financially and often time-wise--to raising four children. Now, not only do I have a bit more disposable income, but I have discovered I can buy used books on the internet. This is fabulous but also horrible because I can buy many more than I can actually find the time to read. Books that came in the mail today:

I have essentially set up my house so that I am never more than ten feet from a book at any time. And for those times when I leave the house, I stuff my backpack with both reading and writing materials lest I ever be caught somewhere without words to play with. The current contents of my backpack (arrayed on my lap desk which is where I write most often while at home):

L-r, top: my current journal, a packet on trauma-informed care for work that I have been trying to finish reading for weeks, two tablets--you know, the vintage kind of tablet, made of paper--where I work on rough drafts; bottom: current issue of Poets & Writers, book of short stories, my previous journal, in case I need to double check whether I've written something down already.

I used to jokingly call myself an addict, but these days I favor the label "zealot"--this shift in preference may or may not be related* to the fact that I desperately needed a "Z" word to round out the A-Z Challenge today.

Z is for Zealot

*Hint: it is totally related.