Goodreads asked Jeff Kalac:

How do you get inspired to write?

Jeff Kalac I was a child at the time I first started writing creatively... maybe... eight or nine years old, I want to say. I was watching a movie on television, and even at that young age, a plot hole in that movie bothered me. I loved everything else about what I was watching, but could not get around that plot hole. It dug at me. I thought about it for days afterward.

Then I suddenly decided to do something about it. I grabbed a pad of paper and a pen. For hours, I agonized over how I would have written that pesky scene; how I would have done it differently. I don't remember if I ever fixed that plot hole (if only for myself), but I do remember that this one event is what started an avalanche of ideas, and I've been writing ever since.

While most authors I'm aware of started writing because of their love of reading, for me the opposite was true: I started reading because I loved to write. The problem with trying to write without also doing a lot of reading is, you don't have any idea what tools are available to you. How does one describe a scene without pulling the reader away from the action? How much description do you need of the action itself? How do you create characters who do not feel like they are all the same person? No, to write, you MUST read: all of these problems have already been faced and overcome--all one has to do is to look at it. What worked, and why? What didn't work, or just felt clumsy?

In no small way, reading was like an apprenticeship. It still is. It's like having the teacher of your choice show you how he or she handles a situation. A situation like, perhaps, a nasty plot hole.

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