Ben Spivey, On Reading

"I read for inspiration and for enjoyment. If I'm at a place with my writing where my words are not doing what I want them to do or the words I'm putting together don't excite me how I'd like them to excite me I then need a new focus, a new start, something like resetting a typewriter to get back to where I was. I then dig into my piles of books, staring at them, flipping through them, looking at first sentences—book after book until I find the correct one to get caught up and lost in—I can then create what makes me whole again."


{Ben Spivey is the author of the novel Flowing in the Gossamer Fold (Blue Square Press 2010). He blogs at yourbrainsblackbox.blogspot.com.}