My Conundrum - Read or Write

On my coffee table there are three piles of books to be read. That doesn't include the nine bookcases around my living room/dining room or the books on tape/CD that are in my car.

Books have been one of the mainstays of my life since Ollie Anna took her daughters to the small Laurel, Maryland library, on Main Street, not far from Dad's barbershop. Even now, more than fifty years later, I remember where the Beatrix Potter books were shelved and The Witch of Blackbird Pond, still one of my favorite stories.

As a child I used to imagine that my bed was a magic carpet and I would place the books I was reading on my bed at time - just in case the "carpet" would lift off. Today I never board a plane without at least one book and each time I do I think of that "magic carpet" bed.

My passion for reading became my passion for writing - for story-telling, really. I was good at story-telling, having been an inveterate liar as a child. Really. I would try out all sorts of tales to get out of going to school. Luckily, by 12 I'd channeled that into writing. Throughout high school and into nursing school, I would pretend to take notes, but all the time I was writing - short stories, poems, plays, letters to imaginary people.

Reading and writing are like breathing. I have to do both to live, but one sometimes takes over the other. I read everyday. I average at least two books a week, one print and one audio.

Now I need to put that same amount of time into my writing.