The Writer as Reader

An untold number of Americans will finish a book manuscript this year, and the mind-numbing majority of them will be confected by nonreaders. How can a nonreader imagine himself an author, the creator of an artifact that he himself admittedly would have no interest in? Can you fathom an architect who’s not fond of impressive buildings, or a violinist who has never listened to music?

.. Your sentences should be a constant source of disappointment and dread, a reminder of the regretful inadequacy of all language and how bloodily you must labor for emotional truth, intellectual assertion, and le mot juste. Joseph Epstein once wrote that “to be in the middle of composing a book is almost always to feel oneself in a state of confusion, doubt and mental imprisonment.”