Why do I read?

I write to transpose myself to another reality, I suppose, placing myself squarely in the shoes of another somewhere else. Reading for me is the means to see through the lens of other people in different places scattered throughout history. It is a combination of empathy, the desire to understand others, and narcissism, the drive to understand human behavior for my own gain.

Why do I write?

Where reading takes me to another world, writing allows me to build that world. That other place starts out as just a speck, or a shadow lurking in the darkness, something that needs to be hewn and carved and polished to be made into something beautiful or noteworthy.

Don DeLillo was quoted as saying, “The scene comes first, an idea of a character in a place. It’s visual, it’s Technicolor—something I see in a vague way. Then sentence by sentence into the breach.”

For me, the idea, the concept, of a novel is like a hallucination simmering on the horizon, a vision that must be molded for others to see, much like Michelangelo’s David or Bugsy Siegel’s casino, the Flamingo. Bugsy saw a glimmer in the desert, a vague notion of something grand, a vision that few others were capable of seeing, even when shown. Out of this glimmer was born Las Vegas.

Ideas like shadows flit through my mind and I want to carve them into the recognizable potential that I know that they are. It is my attempt to understand the world around me.

It would be nice to have my books win accolades, awards, praise, and be bestsellers, but it is not necessary.

Elmore Leonard was always one of my favorite writers, both in westerns and crime novels. I believe this quote of his hits the nail on the head. “In 1984, I finally got on the ‘New York Times’ bestseller list, after I’d been writing for 30 years. It was never one of my goals because I didn’t care for any of the books on that list. The ones that made that list, I wouldn’t read. The review was written by that guy from Maine, who is at all the Red Sox games. What’s his name? Stephen King. He’s terrific. He wrote something like, “After I read this book, I had to go back and read the last seven or eight books.” That’s when I knew I was doing fine.”

Why do I walk the dogs in the woods?

Everyday I take multiple walks in the woods with my dogs. We all need the exercise, of course, but there is a simplicity and beauty to the experience that is unique to every single one of these walks that makes it worthwhile. That is how I feel about the books that I read and write.

The desire to take the shadowy images on the periphery of my conscious mind and carve them into something unique and beautiful drives me to write. But it is not why I write. It is something more essential and vital than just that. The reason I write can best be summed up with a question.

Why do I breathe?