Reading And Writing

When I’m at a loss for words, I often turn to my bookcases.

Inspiration comes in the form of those who have gone before me. Authors whose blood, sweat and tears solidified into paper and binding.

I’ve always been a reader – strolling the stacks at the public library, clutching a small, yellow paper pass to lands I could never have imagined on my own. Nazi Germany, summer on Nantucket, a parallel universe where a young girl and her siblings save the day.

My teachers only reinforced my habit when they told me, over and over again, that every good writer is a good reader.

And so, when the muse deserts, I turn to others for help.

While I love to read fiction, it’s never really been my game when I sit down at the keyboard. Why, I sometimes wonder, would you need to turn to your imagination when real life is so strange and wonderful? There are a thousand stories in the naked city, no?

So it may be against the rules, but I choose to complete the book meme for which Arkie Mama tagged me this week with The Best Of Rolling Stone: 25 Years Of Journalism On The Edge, a collection of outstanding stories that ran in the magazine from 1969 to 1990, the book I am currently re-reading.

Here are the rules:

Pick up the nearest book of at least 123 pages.

Open the book to page 123.

Find the 5th sentence.

Post the next 3 sentences.

Tag 5 people.

Here it is:

As I watch the star now, it finally makes sense to me … the whole day … all of it … the chaps and the violence and the fiery heat are all reduced to a single scene where it all comes together. The star has gone to the fence to meet his swarm. There he is, holding hands with the bare-titted Hollow Lady, throwing her a kiss. – From the 1974 piece, King Of The Goons, about Evel Knievel, by Joe Esterhas

I know I’m supposed to tag five people, and I’m not sure if these fine writers have done this yet. Do it of you like, but don’t feel obligated. That said, I tag:

Misc & Co.

Fizzledink

Chambana Fo Fanna

Candle At Both Ends

My Sister