I read this quote in a collection of essays today and I thought about the many discussions homeschooling parents have with each other about how to teach writing. I'm not familiar with this particular author's novels, but I liked his statement:
Reading taught me how to write (I'm hardly the first to say this), although I didn't know it at the time. ... Reading was a joy, a desperately needed escape - I didn't read to learn, I was reading to read. Still, it slipped through, the crinkled, incomplete spelunker's diagram of how this all works, how to get in, how to get out. Reading wasn't all I needed to be a writer. It wasn't enough, but it was close. Ninety percent of writers' makeup lies in their reading. If I never wrote another word but kept reading, I would become a better writer. Yet if books became illegal for me but my fingers still typed, my artistic progress, I'm sure, would halt.
~ Christian Bauman in BOOKMARK NOW, edited by Kevin Smokler
Keep on reading....