Breathing in, breathing out

Reading is my inhale, and writing is my exhale.

Glennon Doyle, American author

I do my writing in the morning, my reading in the afternoon. It is mostly a matter of energy. I have more of it in the morning, so that is when I write, which takes more energy than reading. In the afternoon I enjoy relaxing with a book and a pot of tea.

Glennon Doyle

I am drawn to Glennon Doyle's observation that reading and writing are both part of the same thing, just as inhaling and exhaling are both parts of breathing.

In my case, that is literally true. In this blog I write mostly about the books I have read. Yet in some sense this is true of everyone who writes. There was a reason our teachers insisted that we cite references in our term papers. What we wrote was supposed to be based on what others had written, not a copy or a paraphrase but rather a digestion of the writing of others into our own thoughts and words. Writing builds on what has been read.

This is true not just of content. It is also true of style and grammar and spelling and punctuation. We learn as we read, and what we learn influences how we write as well as what we write.

Even our letters, texts and emails are often a response to the letters, texts and emails we have received. We breathe in, and then we breathe out.