Fired by Reading

“Reading usually precedes writing and the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.”
- Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag described how writing happened to me. From Dr. Sues to S.E. Hinton, Dickens to Hemingway, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky to James and Lawrence, Hugo, Goldsmith, Mann, Cervantes, Fitzgerald, Conrad, Joyce, and on-and-on, on-and-on, on-and-on, reading fired my impulse to write.

But I've watched movies without dreaming of becoming an actor, listened to music without dreaming of becoming a musician, and read books without dreaming of becoming a writer. The love of reading, instead of "mak[ing me] dream," made me do. That's how you become a writer: you write.


© 2009, Steven R. Lundin, all rights reserved