Writer’s Desk: Writing as a Form of Reading

It’s atruism that one of the best things new writers need to remember is to read. A lot. Not to imitate (though some of that is inevitable, especially at the start) but to understand just what writing is, and to see a book through two sets of eyes at once:

How is the writer able to make me respond this way? How can I get the reader to respond, in any way?

In “Write, Read, Rewrite, Repeat Steps 2 and 3 as Needed,” Susan Sontag limns the linkage between the two:

First, because to write is to...