The Reading/Writing Balance

Before I ever believed I could be a writer, the work of my masters made me dream of what I might create—something worthy of shadowing in the footsteps of their monumental achievements. In reading the works of those I revere, I was driven to follow their greatness, to emulate what they do. Early in my teens, this often led me to consume all the work of certain authors: Shakespeare, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Dostoevsky, Camus, Hesse, Borges, Steinbeck, Wright, Hemingway, and others. As I read, often I’d come across something about the way they wrote and I’d become nervous, alarmed, even discouraged that my writing habits didn’t mirror those of my masters and the way they did their art. I’d feel defeated that if I couldn’t mimic their “ways”, I couldn’t be a writer. For example, Dostoevsky wrote several versions of his novels to find what worked best. Unreal? Could I ever match such a standard? This often caused real doubt in my early days of writing. If I wanted to write like the best, I needed to adopt their “way.” Right? Then after I finished college, it dawned on me how every writer did their art differently. By this time I was enamored with many of my contemporary masters: Morrison, McCarthy, Ondaatje, Doctorow, O’Brien and the list goes on. As I consumed their work, I realized there is no one right “way” to write. In fact, Morrison didn’t start writing her novels until she was forty. But she’d been a writer her entire life. As a lifelong reader and a professional book editor, she lived and breathed reading, writing, language, and literature.

For me, I must work in streaks and forays, yet every day I live and breathe reading, writing, language, and literature. I may never be able to put down a specific number of words each day or assign a disciplined block of time each day, but I live and breathe reading, writing, language, and literature every day. As a self-proclaimed reader first, I’m unable to go a single day without finding at least a few hours to read. Reading sparks my thinking, envisioning, obsessing, planning, preparing, researching, editing, and revising—all of which are necessities for me to write, all of which I carry out a little each day. I may do 10,000 words in a few days or less than a 1,000 in a given week. It all depends where I’m at in the process. But one aspect remains constant every day: I live and breathe reading, writing, language, and literature. If I’m writing a lot, naturally time is taken away from reading. The reciprocation is true: if I’m reading a lot, it is essentially to gear me up for an intense period of writing. This is my cycle, and worries do not bother me anymore if I’m not “writing” every single day because I am actually in the process of writing with everything else I do. My habit of a reading/writing balance is the only way my art works for me.

Roger 8-)