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layout:	post
title:	"To live a hundred thousand lives"
date:	2018-01-14
---

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> “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies…The man who never reads lives only one.” ― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with DragonsWhy 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.