When I began writing, I somehow felt that I wasn’t doing my job if I was reading books. After all, I wasn’t putting words on paper (okay, on computer), and everything I had read about how to be a writer said: “Writers Write”
Then one day, when I was suffering the inevitable hunger that drives us to spend the day eating taco chips and reading a great book, I remembered who I am–who I have always been: a reader. And not long into the book, I discovered that I was reading with new eyes. I noticed minor characters, scenes that came alive, and cities that took on a life of their own. I discovered history that read with all the drama of fiction, biography that made me want to change the world, and stories that I wanted to share with others–which is why I started writing in the first place.
So I am back to reading without making excuses. I have a new appreciation for what I can learn from other writers. Reading is part of the work that I need to do. The taco chips are probably optional.
Geoff Ryman: “I think that it’s a good thing for the imagination to do to try to imagine someone else’s life. I see no other way to be moral, . . . Otherwise you end up sympathizing only with yourself” (qtd. in Writing the Other, Shawl and Ward. P. 97).
