I read a lot of books so I know for certain I’m a terrible writer. My sentences fall mostly flat. My ideas emerge from paragraphs backwards and often awkwardly. I repeat the same words over and over. At times, my working-vocabulary consists of five hundred words. Maybe two-fifty. Or seventy-five. Never enough to transmit my thoughts and ideas into good writing.

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I read a lot of books so I know for certain I’m mostly a naive person. There’s so much in my life I avoided because of ignorance and fear. For the most part, I take for granted my good health. I feel like giving up when it comes to relationships.  I don’t know how much to give, how much to take. Never the right amount, it seems. Books help me understand.

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I read a lot of books so I know for certain the more I read, the greater understanding and respect I have for my own ignorance, my own lack of knowledge -  all that I don’t know and will never know. Reading books teaches me there are others out there like me, distant colleagues who have struggled to make sense of their own dumb consciousness. Words and sentences are plastic materials in which to dig for understanding and to shape one’s view; however, the words never completely satisfy, the descriptions never match the beauty inside the imagination.

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I read a lot of books so I know there are a lot of gaps between words. There’s always a space before and after each word, for one thing. Big spaces between paragraphs. I spend a lot of time in the white space between words, tweaking punctuation to join fragments, loitering around the perimeters of paragraphs. Sometimes what is not said is more important than what is expressed (however awkwardly and backwards-like.)

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I read a lot of books which means I’ve spent a lot of time investigating the invisible world between writer and reader, the white space between picking up a pen to write, until the moment on the other side when settling down with a book to read; that space where the invisible meaning beyond words and language transmits from one human mind to another.

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And what I’ve learned is this:

 

The invisible world doesn’t become visible easily. In order to succeed, you need to risk everything you possess in life, put aside your fear, and forget about all that stuff that has anything to do with skill or the lack thereof. I write out of my own will to express. I write because writing is how I inhabit this world.

 

Vince Montague

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