A writer's writer.

To write well, one must read well. I listened to a great interview with David Sedaris on Fresh Air this week and also discovered the author James Salter. Salter is a writer – a writer’s writer – featured in a recent New Yorker and interviewed in the Paris Review:

I’m a frotteur, someone who likes to rub words in his hand, to turn them around and feel them, to wonder if that really is the best word possible. Does that word in this sentence have any electric potential? Does it do anything? Too much electricity will make your reader’s hair frizzy. There’s a question of pacing. You want short sentences and long sentences—well, every writer knows that. You have to develop a certain ease of delivery and make your writing agreeable to read.

Which makes me think about how writing is like cooking and words and sentences are like ingredients that can be mixed, sliced, stirred, shaken, rearranged, omitted, committed, and finely seasoned to create infinite, unique literary flavors. I am inspired by these word chefs:

David Sedaris
Sam Shepard
Maya Angelou
Ernest Hemingway
Mark Twain
Nikky Finney

And want to read the works of many more:

Phillip Roth
Flannery O’Connor
Colette
Jhumpa Lahiri
John Le Carré