To live a hundred thousand lives
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies…The man who never reads lives only one.” ― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons
Why settle for just one life. Why settle for just one world. When you can live lives, explore worlds that you might not otherwise ever have imagined.
If I can make just one person pick up a book who might not otherwise have done so, then all this writing — all this Scribbling — was not for naught. Maybe I won’t. It certainly seems unlikely on Medium, where it seems everyone is a reader, if not often a writer too.
And that’s the crux of a tangential but related matter. All writers read. For reading the work of others is what fuels our own creative flame. It seems obvious when you say it — but I think it bears repeating regardless.
There’s only one thing better than living a thousand lives, treading a thousand paths.
And that’s burning your own path. Not just in life material — for that is truly wonderful in its freedom.
To forge your own world among the multitude. Craft characters, spin stories. Perhaps…probably…it isn’t for everyone[1].
But to me, it is nothing short of awesome. Writing my story — my own story — both in life and in ink.
The ink and the life intertwined. Life inspires writing…and writing guides life. Inextricable. I write to live, and I live to write.
Overly dramatic, but there’s truth in it.
[1] Reading however, surely must be. Anyone who ‘doesn’t like to read’ must not have found the right story, the right format. Or maybe that’s just me blinded by bias.
