I bought a copy of The Lake Matters: Notes about Writing and Life by Aram Saroyan. Lorry had just made dinner and we were preparing to eat and there I was standing, reading Aram's book and loving it and I forgot about time. I was standing, reading. Time stopped. Dinner stopped. But life did not stop. Life was going on in that book, especially in that chapter I was reading where the author says -- "The writer reads, so to speak, as the carpenter looks at a newly built house -- with, perhaps, the idea of building another one like it, or maybe incorporating a nicety into an edifice currently under construction." Yes, I thought, yes. This is what's it's like to read as a writer where every comma is a dovetail joint and where every period is a ten penny nail.

What a magnificent book this is for teachers. And for writers. Both of which Aram Saroyan is.

And do not forget, he also wrote a poem that completely changed the way I (and most of my generation) listened to crickets:

Not a
cricket
ticks a
clock

As I read, and the dinner cooled on the table, a blue glow came around Aram's book. And the room, and those in it, were lighter and brighter and wiser. I looked around. The book of the blue glow was still glowing. And that's how writers read books. Something may happen that has never happened before. Aram Saroyan, 1965