Well, this is awkward.

On a day that the trailer dropped for Frozen II (and I vowed to watch it a bazillion times. I suggest you do so, dear reader. It’s awesome.), I find that myself being fickle. My heart. It’s cheating.

Animation, I will always have fond thoughts of you but it is writing that I love.

Huh.

Color me surprised. I guess I hadn’t expected this. I thought I’d go on loving animation until I got old and crunchy and eventually turned into dust and soul-light. But here I am, having a passionate affair with words.

I’ve defended my switch to writing in the past. “Storytelling is storytelling. I just changed mediums,” I would say, and then sigh over the latest film with ill-repressed longing.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve loved books, too. With scarcely matched furor. But . . . animation, my first love. Oh, how I pined for you.

But back to books. My books, notably. They’ve tugged at corners of my heart that had long lain unclaimed–or unused since my change of intended career.

And I hadn’t intended authorship! I hadn’t! A happy accident, that. No, series of happy accidents. And all leading to this new realization:

I love writing. I love my characters. My stories. My magic(k) systems. My writer’s block. My late night editing sessions. The rush and roar. The dull as dull in-betweens. The slogs and the unexpected, enthusiastic fans. All of it. I love writing, warts and all. And am realizing it only now, 5 published- and nearly 15 ‘dabbling’- years in.

So, dear reader, Happy Saint Valentine’s Day. I hope you have love.