A Book Before Bed

My daughter reads to her son every night before bed.

He is eleven and likes mythological, fantasy, high action books. My daughter says that sometimes this desire to keep a reader going, to have each chapter end with some disaster, some catastrophe, or some life-altering event gets tiring.

This need / desire to keep the action happening at the end of the chapter leaves no place to wind down, to pause, and to give a reprieve from reading and a desire to return to it the following night.  

So she has developed the habit of stopping in the middle of the chapter.

Now that flies in the face of present-day thinking. Keep ‘em reading. Keep ‘em engaged. Keep 'em turning the page.

Nope. Lead us gently to a fantastic ending.

What say you?

Bear / Bare

#Grammarly, an editing program, saved me.

While I wanted my readers to bear with me, I didn’t want them to bare with me—then we would be standing there naked.

Instead, I wanted them to bear, not bare, not read Winnie the Pooh or see that big furry creature over there smelling the daisy, but to endure, to stick with me.

It was all so frustrating I got bare and stepped into water so hot I could hardly bear it.