I’ve got to ask you. I’m going to ask you again. I guess it may be a little different, it may be the same. But what does it mean, then, to know—you’re talking about being a little alone, lonely, disconnected, whatever as a child, or as a young person—now knowing that you’re writing and you’re giving a similar gift to others and that connection. You know what it meant to you, Brandon Sanderson, when you were young. What does it mean to now be the giver of that, or the connector of those? How would you respond?
I tell people if they really want to get to know me, read my fiction because I’m there in every character. And people say they read my books and they feel like they know me, and they kind of joke, ‘Oh no, I don’t really.’ And I say, no, you do. It’s there. If you’re reading it, you’re seeing me. And I remember when the first time I realized that I was doing what you just said—that I was doing for people what people had done for me—was when I started getting my first emails. And I had gotten one from someone who said to me, it was a young man, ‘Your books are what made me start reading.’ And it stomped me, it throws me, and it floored me, because I have trouble believing I belong on the shelf with all those writers that I grew up reading, because they’re the masters and I’m just the journeyman. I got into this because of them. And that was the first moment where I froze, and I said, ‘Oh, wow! It’s happening. I mean, I’m part of this. It’s a cycle. It’s a circle. I’m giving back to what people gave to me.’ It really was a strange and surreal moment, and I just sat and stared at the screen for a little while.
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