Purposefully Reading

“Had she been asked if reading had enriched her life she would have had to say yes, undoubtedly, though adding with equal certainty that it had at the same time drained her life of all purpose. Once she had been a self-assured single-minded woman knowing where her duty lay and intent on doing it for as long as she was able. Now all too often she was in two minds. Reading was not doing, that had always been the trouble. And old though she was, she was still a doer.”

pg. 100
The Uncommon Reader, Alan Bennett

I’m certainly not old by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ve felt like I haven’t been doing much lately, either, by just reading. It’s been a few months since I worked on my latest story, yet it feels like a longer stretch of time has passed. Last time I read my story, I had no idea how I’d arrived at the last scene before the page dribbles away into blank white. As the main character in Bennett’s book notes on page 101, “You don’t put your life into your books. You find it there.”

It’s time to find mine beyond my latest reads.

~ by RhiGirl on January 27, 2008.