If you read and write, write and read, you know that one leads to the other.
At least it does for those of us that bend that way.
I can’t count how many times I have read something and been mad.
Muttering to myself: “Why didn’t I write that?”
I have thought that frequently reading Hemingway, and McCarthy, of course.
It starts with reading, and then I need to write something, just to get it all out.
And I hate the trade-off.
“What a drug this little book is; to imbibe it is to find oneself presuming his process. I read and feel that same compulsion; the desire to possess what he has written, which can only be subdued by writing something myself. It is not mere envy but a delusional quickening in the blood. Soon abstracted, the book slips off my lap and I am off, diverted by the calloused heels of a young lad delivering loaves.”
–Patti Smith, M Train
